


The Contingency Plan

by gingerteaandsympathy



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bad Wolf Rose Tyler, Eventual Sex, F/M, Nine and Rose reunion, Parallel Universe, Telepathic Bond, Telepathic Sex, doomsday fix-it, eventual Tenrose, timey wimey nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-04-24
Packaged: 2019-10-27 16:30:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 31,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17770283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingerteaandsympathy/pseuds/gingerteaandsympathy
Summary: In which the Doctor has a contingency plan."The button that will take him back to himself. The contingency plan. The failsafe. The button he designed after Krop Tor, in a fever of fear and fatalism, to make sure Rose would never be unreachable.The Time Lords had done this sort of thing before - folding time together, sustaining paradoxes so it was possible for multiple versions of the same person to interact.After all, there was only one man for the job. And it couldn't be him.Well, not exactly."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my first multi-chapter project! This fic is completely written and has been sitting in my docs for ages, and I decided... why not just post it? But I'm gonna be reworking it a bit as I go, so I'm thinking I'll be posting a chapter a week (tentatively) to give me plenty of time to make changes.
> 
> A few notes:
> 
> \- The first two chapters involve a bit of jumping around between Doctors and between times, so I'm sorry if that's not your thing or you find it disruptive. We'll settle into one perspective by next chapter, I promise.
> 
> \- I took some liberties with the way the void works in this. Oops. But I just can't stand these two being apart and unhappy, so I fiddled with the rules of the universe to make this story happen. It will mostly go unexplained, because I'm more about the emotional impact than scientific accuracy. I think the Doctor would think that's quite fair, if it means he gets his Rose back.
> 
> \- Be ye warned: there's gonna be sex! Which I literally cannot believe, because I've never written smut before. But I treated it as a sort of challenge, so this story has three big, juicy chapters of ongoing sexy times. If you don't like that sort of thing, I'm not sure this fic is for you - it's mostly emotional exploration and feelings, followed by resolving those feelings through sex.
> 
> \- This story is mostly between Nine and Rose, but has a firm respect and love for Ten and Rose, who are the endgame of this fic, even if they don't spend much time together.
> 
> \- This fic is written in third person present tense. I know that bothers some people. Hell, it usually bothers me. What can I say? I was trying something.
> 
> Without further ado, the story! Enjoy!

**2005.**

A man in a leather jacket stands outside in the persistent London drizzle, his back pressed against the doors of a blue, wooden phone box. He takes in the scene around him with an unaccustomed serenity - the two blonde women, running toward one another, making these ungodly squeals and squeaks of enthusiasm that pierce the air; the man in a long, World War II military-issue coat, giving a smirk and a quick, two-fingered salute before jogging off into the rain; the bland, high walls of the Powell estate all around. 

Most days, the Doctor _hates_ this bit. The domestics. All the pointless chatter and laundry and trying to hear anyone over the telly and the tea kettle. But today - or rather, tonight, since it's dusk - he doesn't mind the domesticity of it all. He's still riding a sort of quasi-high, knowing that everybody lived. Just this once, everybody lived. And then, he'd danced.

He finds himself beaming.

His eyes follow the younger blonde woman as she bounces and smiles and greets her mother like they've been separated for ages. And to one so young, he thinks, to one with such a short lifespan, it probably feels like it has been. The thought tugs at him and he doesn't want to think about it tonight, or possibly ever, so he clears his throat.

"Rose," he calls out, his rumbly, Northern accent somehow cutting through the din of the rain and women prattling, "I'll just be in the TARDIS. Whenever you're ready."

She turns back to him, her eyes soft and questioning, almost asking permission. "I'll be back in an hour?" 

And because he's feeling indulgent, and because he's just realized that he would do anything to make her happy, he says, "Take as long as you like. We've got all the time in the world." And when she smiles at him, it digs straight into his chest and he can feel  _it_ again, in the space between his - idiotic, sentimental, positively _soft_  - hearts.

He watches Rose leave, walking arm-in-arm with her mother, who is already babbling about the latest gossip on the estate. Rose isn't quite listening, and he can tell by the way she glances back over her shoulder one last time, smiling at him again. Her tongue slides out between her teeth, and for some reason, he finds himself grinning back at her like some kind of stupid ape.

And when she rounds the corner, he turns his back and re-enters the police box, still grinning.

 

 

**2006/Nowhen.**

He doesn't know how long he's been standing there, in the TARDIS, with his hands at the controls and foolish tears sliding down his cheeks. He doesn't know why he couldn't get the words out - why, when it was his last chance, he couldn't make himself say it. He can't even say the words now, with no one to hear them! He can't even _form the words in his mind._

He runs a hand through his hair in a way that could almost be perceived as violent, though he isn't one for violence. He was angry once, for a very long time, and then he'd changed. Really, he'd been angry right up until he'd kissed Rose and died for his trouble and then come back with hair she'd like and a body she'd want and lips for her to kiss, if she'd have him.

Born loving that woman, he'd been, and now he wouldn't ever get to say.

 _Unless_ , he thinks.

And he is right about to smack a button - perhaps more aggressively than necessary, but in his defense, he's just had a trauma - when the TARDIS makes a violent lurch that knocks him to the side.

He laughs bitterly. "I know."

She lurches again. He stumbles and re-balances. 

" _I know_. But it's Rose."

And he knows he won't get a third warning, so he just does it. Just slams his hand onto a button that he has never used, probably never should use, that he never wants to use, because there's no going back - not really. Not for him.

The button that will take him back to himself. The contingency plan. The failsafe. The button he'd designed after Krop Tor, in a fever of fear and fatalism, to make sure Rose would never be unreachable.

The Time Lords had done this sort of thing before - folding time together, sustaining paradoxes so it was possible for multiple versions of the same person to interact.

After all, there was only one man for the job. And it couldn't be him.

Well, not _exactly_.

He speaks aloud to his ship - his patient, wonderful ship who will feel it the worst if this goes wrong. "Pull me back in five minutes, no matter what. Do you hear me?" He is beginning to dematerialize, and he can hear it in the echoey, thin nature of his voice as he speaks to the TARDIS. "Five minutes. Not a second more."

And then the timeship is empty. 

 

 

**2005.**

And he'd been having such a nice day, too. 

But now his lovely mood has been utterly ruined, because standing there, by the central console, is someone who most certainly does not belong there. His magnificent, longsuffering TARDIS currently contains one too many Time Lords, and he can tell she doesn't like it from the queasy flashes at the console. Apparently, his fellow Time Lord can also tell, as he's shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot and cautiously avoiding touching anything.

"Well, that's rubbish," the older-looking younger man rumbles, his accent harsh with irritation. "But I bet Rose just _loves_ you. Poncey, pretty boys were always her type."

And the man in pinstripes - this intruder - has the gall to look affronted. His voice comes out in a huff as he says, in a clipped London accent, "We haven't got time for this and I wouldn't be here if it weren't important."

"Go on, then."

It's an odd little stand-off, between two men who are really the same man, and neither of whom can stand the other - or what he _means_. 

"Right," the intruder says finally. "It's about Rose. I lost her."

"You _lost_ \--? " The more temperamental Doctor is about to go on a blistering rampage when he abruptly stops himself. His eyes tighten around the edges. "So, how do I get her back?"

The intruder quirks something almost like a smile. "Glad you're catching on. I built this contingency plan a while ago - a path to you. I built it before the void closed, which means... Well, I can't precisely tell you what it means, as I don't actually know if it means what I think it means, but I'll give you coordinates and a warning: the TARDIS will die when you get there."

By this point, the Doctor's leather clad body is practically vibrating with the effort not to trounce this future version of him, paradox be damned. "I'm assuming you have a plan for that," he manages through gritted teeth.

The other man nods. "I do. _Weeellll_ , sort of. There's a power cell - small, insignificant, but it'll do the trick if you can charge it up with something from our universe. Even a simple 21st century Earth battery would do, so long as it's from this universe."

His fists have clenched and he can feel his fingernails carving half-moons into his palms. "You _lost Rose in another universe?_ " he growls.

"I didn't exactly lose her," the man in pinstripes snaps. "She was lost. She fell through a crack and now she's in a parallel world, and you know bloody well that there's nothing you can say to me that I haven't already said to myself, so let's just skip it and get to the bit where we rescue the woman we--" and then his mouth closes like a steel trap, his jaw working uselessly.

"What, as if _I_  don't know we love her?" the Doctor in leather mocks, his arms crossing over his chest. "Right, by all means, let's deny it. I'm sure she loves that, too - flouncy hair and fear of commitment! Just what women want."

The intruder is pacing now. "Well, you've never said it either!" 

"She's never asked!"

"None of this is the point!" He throws his hands in the air, and then rakes them through his rather obnoxiously wild hair. "I need you to get her. There are others I could've asked, but I'm quite confident you're the only one who's mad enough to flout the laws of time, purposely fling himself out of the vortex, and jump into a parallel universe to save Rose. So, I'll give you coordinates to where and when she is, and coordinates for where and when to bring her. And you need to do this quickly, and be back promptly, so your Rose doesn't know you're missing."

"And what's to stop me from sending her somewhere else?" The Doctor asks, coat creaking as he uncrosses his arms and runs a hand over his face. He's already exhausted, and it seems it's only going to get worse. "You clearly don't deserve her."

"Neither of us do," says the intruder with a sad shake of his head. "But I promised she could stay with me forever, and I won't let anyone break that promise - not even me. Now, here's what's going to happen..."

 

 

**2011.**

Atmospheric entry - it's not really re-entry if you've never been somewhere before - is as brutal as he'd been warned about. After navigating carefully through a crack in the fabric of reality - flying through the eye of an incredibly dangerous and volatile needle - the TARDIS is shaking, and pulsing, and seems to be trying to skip across time and space rather than materialize on this godforsaken planet in the wrong timeline. But he holds her steady, says soothing words in his native tongue, reminds her that he's doing this for Rose. Their pink and yellow girl that she likes so much.

Still, the landing isn't pleasant. Much in the way that death isn't pleasant. 

All the lights blink out. All the systems shut down. He experiences a moment of brief panic, worrying that something's gone wrong, that maybe the other him lied, maybe she can't be fixed, maybe he's just done this for nothing, or to prevent something _else_  from happening.

But when he steps onto the foreign Earth, the TARDIS doors slam firmly behind him, nearly hitting him on his way out. He is being punished, but he has left the TARDIS to lick her own wounds and begin recovering. A little power cell, glowing a faint green, with a fully-charged car battery plugged in, sits on the main deck. (He'd gone with more power than instructed, just to be on the safe side.) All the parts need is a bit of time.

When he looks out into this world - as his pinstriped self kept saying, "Pete's World" - he is a bit bemused by the zeppelins. It's night here, deep and honest night, and where he should see stars, he's seeing a sky crowded with great, heaving, gray machines. He wonders how Rose stands it, and he feels yet another pinch of anger at himself for losing her. She doesn't belong here, under a starless gray sky.

So, he hurries out into the street to find her. _Time is of the essence_ , the future him had said, in that irritating, condescending way of his - like he wasn't talking to a Time Lord. Like he didn't _know_.

Staying too long would not be... well, it wouldn't be very healthy for the state of his own personal timeline. A mind - whether Time Lord or not - can only allow for so many paradoxes.

 

 

**2006/Nowhen.**

Back in his own TARDIS, in that same suit that he'd first put on because he'd thought she might like it, the Doctor waits. 

 

 

**2011\. Day Zero.**

He doesn't have anything to go on when he looks for her. The coordinates he'd been given were for the entire planet and a timeframe, but nothing more specific. He has a general impression that she's probably stayed in London, since it's the most familiar to her, and it's also where her parallel family would probably live. He'd been given no details. The other him had no street addresses, no landmarks - nothing specific to guide him.

The Doctor looks all night, underneath the claustrophobic, zeppelin-filled sky, and he can't help wondering if she's already moved on, if she even wants to go back to that drippy, manic version of him who was so careless as to lose her. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First contact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any and all mistakes, as usual, belong to me and my phone's auto-correct!
> 
> Enjoy!

**2011.** **Day One.**

It's nearly noon the next day when he realizes it's actually been quite a few days since he last slept, and the last thing he ate was a bite of turkey in a roomful of orphans. He decides to hunt down some lunch, and his stomach - superior Time Lord biology or not - gives an encouraging little growl. Anyway, if he _is_ trying to find Rose, it's not a half-bad bet that she's getting lunch. She's got to have a job. Maybe she's gone for chips or something.

He's not normally so easily distracted, but the thought of Rose and chips sends him into a memory of the first time they had a meal together - the smile on her face as she licked vinegar and salt off her fingers.

He's a besotted idiot, he is.

And that's why, when he does see her, he's so lost in memory that he almost misses her. 

He's just wandered in to some sort of business plaza - though most places around here look like business plazas, full of business suits and mobile phones - and there's nary a chippy in sight. He wonders if he's in the posh part of London. The thought almost makes him cringe, because if it is, there's no way she's _here_. But there this little café with outdoor seating, merging into a paved courtyard where there's a large fountain, and beside that fountain is Rose.

And she looks... different.

His eyes skim over her face-in-profile twice before she angles her head enough for him to see that it really, truly is her.

The first thing he notices is the hair. Maybe they don't have her preferred shade of blonde box dye in Pete's World, or maybe she's just moved on to a different look, but her hair is almost... brown. Her natural color, he thinks, based on the shadow his Rose always has at the roots. It's kind of a lovely, warm nutmeg that, way toward the bottom, gradually fades into a suggestion of honey blonde, barely there. He wonders why she ever dyed it in the first place, because she looks rather striking. It makes her cheeks look even more fresh, even more pink.

His eyes drift to her face, at once so familiar and so, so strange. She's older. Not much older - maybe three or four years, at the very most. But she's definitely older. Her chin has lost some of its roundness. Her cheekbones are more prominent, sharp. And her expression - though she's smiling and chatting away animatedly with another woman - seems so much more controlled. 

And her eyes. This Rose has seen violence and loss on a scale that his beloved girl back home can't yet dream of. You can see it, in the eyes.

Those eyes.

What had once been endless pools of easy laughter and limitless compassion are replaced entirely. Closed-off. The smile on her lips doesn't touch them. And what's more, the familiar whisky brown seems to glow with some preternatural light. There's a hint of gold in her irises, a suggestion of something inhuman shining through. It makes him shudder and he doesn't know why.

And of course, because it's Rose and her timing is impeccable, it's exactly when he shudders that she notices him. He hasn't even had time to school his face into something like a pleasant expression. He's all shock and dismay and fear when she reads him, and the smile slides off her mouth like it had never been there to begin with.

He can see but not hear her saying, "Excuse me. I'll see you Monday." It's a curt dismissal, but perhaps her companion is used to such mood swings, because the other woman walks off without comment.

Rose approaches him slowly and he finally gets a good look at her body. She's in head-to-toe black, like she's in mourning, only it's all synthetics and leather. Harsh. _Tactical_ , some part of his brain registers. She's leaner. Like her face, her body has lost some of its softness. She's definitely more graceful, though. In fact, if he didn't know this was Rose, he'd be bloody terrified. 

His Rose, his precious girl, is stalking towards him like she owns the ground beneath her combat boot-clad feet. Like she owns the earth beneath his feet, too, and maybe the sky over their heads - and hell, maybe she owns him. She walks like she does. Like she's coming to claim him. And Rassilon, is that a _holster_ on her thigh?

Her eyes are guarded, her fingers twitching towards the gun strapped at her leg. She isn't reaching for it, not yet - but she's ready to.

He knows he has to get hold of this situation or it could all go pear-shaped.

So he forces a little grin onto his face - one he knows she likes, and he hopes it looks genuine - and he moves toward her, too. And as they stand face-to-face in the middle of a crowded plaza, he reaches out and takes her hand and says, "Run!"

 

 

It's a brisk pace he keeps, as relentless as ever, and Rose adapts to it with ease. Around the block they go, through an alleyway, under an awning that a poor shopkeep is trying to prop open. They just run.

He hadn't thought beyond the running, actually. 

The Doctor quickly turns the mad dash into something more purposeful, each turn leading them closer to the TARDIS. He holds the mental map in his head. It may be a parallel world, but city planning is the same everywhere you go.

They've been running for a minute or two when he glances back to check on her, to see if she's keeping up alright. Right about now, his Rose would be starting to pant and huff and perhaps even whinge a bit about his poor sense of direction, but she doesn't seem the least bit winded. And she still hasn't spoken.

And she's smiling.

It's just a hint of a curve at the side of her mouth, but it isn't that flat mask she'd worn before, so he calls that progress. He squeezes her warm hand in his.

That's when he notices it, sparking from the ends of her fingertips - that familiar euphoria he's felt from Rose a hundred times. It's tinged with something sad, perhaps something desperate, but he recognizes the core emotion. Joy.

The rush of the familiar emotion makes him smile, wide and daft. He's always tried to give Rose her privacy, and to let her feelings remain exclusively her own. But she's projecting so loudly, and her pheromones buzz enthusiastically, coaxing at the calluses on his fingers. She is still so warm and vibrant.

That's his girl. _She's not so different,_  he tells himself. _He didn't ruin her. I didn't._

As they dash around a corner and nearly miss a cyclist, she starts laughing. A breathless, wild laughter that crackles under his skin like a flickering flame. Her laughter doesn't stop until he whips her around a final corner and she's face-to-face with the TARDIS.

He turns to say something quippy and mad and hopefully impressive, but when he looks at her, her face has crumpled. Her expression is one of raw shock. And she bursts into tears.

 

 

When Rose stops crying and he stops holding her together with his hands and calm silence, she finally reaches out for the TARDIS door with the hand that isn't holding his.

She doesn't even touch it - it just opens.

His eyebrows fly up as she steps inside, the TARDIS welcoming her with a tired hum, and he doesn't understand how it's possible that she's so in tune with his ship. Of course, the TARDIS had always _liked_  Rose. But when had she started to _obey_  her?

Rose is too busy running her free hand over everything she passes - the console, the time rotor, the coral struts, the railings and seats - to notice his pensive expression. Even in the dim light, she navigates the timeship like she's never left it. And she pulls him along behind her, unwilling to loose her grip on his hand. He feels her wonder, vague and quiet, but deep.

And then - once she seems satisfied that this is real - her eyes snap to his. He realizes that neither of them have said a word since "run" and based on the seriousness of her expression, he understands what she's been looking for. Cracks in the illusion. Inconsistencies.

Rose pulls the Doctor down onto the grated floor of the TARDIS, uncaring that they're sitting practically in the dark, but for a slim sliver of light from the windows and the low, red emergency lighting. They're both on their knees, facing one another, and her eyes are glinting with that gold that curls around her pupils like wisps of smoke.

Her eyes are always doing that, back the prime universe - shining like they know a secret that he can't yet imagine. But this is different. She really _does_ know his future, and it's powerfully present in the way her gaze meets his. It's dangerous. But he tries not to be unsettled by the confident woman before him.

He waits for her to speak.

 

 

He tries to release her hand, but she won't let go of him as she asks, "How'd you get here?" Her voice is the same as ever - London accent, rich with unripe laughter and shared memories and youth. But she speaks with a weight and authority that is new. She asks this question like she expects it to be answered.

He gives her a wicked grin, already knowing he's a fool to try to evade her line of questioning. He could blame his discomfiture, but the truth is, he's unsure of what to say. So he shrugs his shoulders and says, "Your pretty boyfriend sent me." He can see her pulse flutter in her throat at that one.

"No," she corrects quickly. "I didn't ask who. I asked how."

His eyebrows jump. _My_ c _lever girl._  "Still asking the right questions, I see."

"Still dodgy with the answers, I see," she shoots back, giving him that barely-there smile again. It isn't the one with the tongue, but it's something.

He can't tell if her voice is playful or venomous or just desperate. Though they're still touching and that's an (involuntary) one-way ticket into the nooks and crannies of Rose's psyche, her chemicals and feelings have become impossibly chaotic, tumbling over one another to get out.

Her chest rises and falls as she takes a steadying breath. Her exterior is so calm that he wonders how she can contain all that turmoil inside. She says, "Fine, then. Tell me: are you _my_  Doctor?" 

It's desperation, he decides. She's worried she's having a psychological break, probably. Or that he's an imposter. Body-snatcher. Clone.

Ghost.

Though her mouth is set, her eyes are darting around his face like she can't get enough of it - like he is a distant memory returned to life. He tries not to shudder at the thought, and the weight of his time sense starts rattling around anxiously in his brain.

He pushes it firmly to the back of his mind. _Not right now,_  he tells himself.

"I'm not some half-baked, parallel-world version of me, if that's what you're asking," he replies, keeping his tone light.

"You obviously know me, so this can't be before we met," Rose says quietly. She is thinking aloud, a habit he'd noticed about his future self. He wonders if she picked it up from him, or - and his smile threatens to disappear when he considers it - if it was a coping mechanism she'd developed against his loss. Filling silence. "But we weren't apart very much back then, so I can't imagine how you're squeezing this in. When are you from?"

The ease with which she speaks that clunky question makes him wonder again at her. She's adapted so fully to time travel, here and now. She seems completely at ease with non-linear time and it makes him wonder - how long has she been this Rose? This strong, sharp woman? Did he make her this? 

"I can't tell you that," he evades. It's a test.

Which, of course, she passes. Or fails, depending on what the desired outcome was. 

Rose waves her hand irritably. "Why not? You won't damage my timeline, or at least, not any more than future you already has." The bitterness in her tone leeches away. "No, that's not fair. You tried. But, Doctor, we both know it's me who can't tell you anything. Spoilers, you know."

He is a bit in awe of her - of her sheer, brassy confidence. At the way she speaks to him. It's so _her_  and yet, it feels so startlingly different.

"You can tell me things," he says cheerfully. "I'll just have to forget them."

She grins at that and it's a grin he knows. It's shades away from that tongue-touched smile he loves so much. "Alright then, Doctor. Wanna trade? I tell you, you tell me?"

And because he wants to see her smile more - and because he's decided he's got time to kill - he says, "Rose Tyler, you're on."

 

 

She starts by repeating the previous question. "When did you come from?"

He can barely hold back his stupid, big grin as he replies, "The estate in 2005. Just dropped you off for laundry and tea with your mum." He knows that's not what she's asking, but it's all he wants to give her at the moment. He can't decide whether he's intentionally prolonging this or if he's just frightened she'll accidentally give something away. For all he knows, he's just left their last adventure together - with this face, anyway.

"You dirty cheat," she sighs. "Fine. Your turn."

He has to think carefully before asking her anything. It needs to be relatively harmless and completely avoid touching his future, because he's essentially playing Russian Roulette, only instead of a bullet, they might get a paradox.

So, he sticks with an innocent question about her present.

"You changed your hair," he begins.

Her face wrinkles in vague confusion. "That's not a question."

"No," he says casually. "Why'd you change it?"

When she answers, it's with a bit of a sigh. "I'm in a parallel world, it's clearly been years for me, and you ask me about my _hair_?" She rolls her eyes. "Bloody typical man." Her free hand combs loosely through the waves - its another mannerism that reminds him of his other self. When she speaks, her tone is wistful. "I wanted a change, after... after we said goodbye. I thought it would help me... move on, I suppose." And then, brusquely, "And anyway, it's better for travel. Brunettes are unobtrusive when you're abroad."

The Doctor arches his eyebrows. He isn't sure what he expected. _I dyed it brown because I'm in mourning_  would have been a mad answer. 

"I like it," he says lamely. "You travel for work?"

"Not your turn," Rose replies smoothly. "Where were you just _before_  the estate? And if you say the vortex, I'm gonna toss you into the Thames. Before _that_ , too." Her eyes lock on his. "I wanna know where we were together, what we were doing."

The Doctor takes a deep breath and tries not to let a grin creep over his face, but it doesn't quite work. "London," he says simply. "The Blitz." And then his grin turns into one of those megawatt smiles that he allows so rarely - only on the very best days. "Everybody lives."

"And we dance," Rose supplies with an accompanying smile that lights up her face and sends the gold in her eyes twirling.

 

 

It feels like they can't catch up quick enough, especially not when they have to dodge around asking world-altering questions. But he learns so much about her.

She works for an agency - a government agency, though she won't tell him the name or purpose. Her job sends her traveling all over the world, collecting artifacts. When he asks, "Alien?" her eyes sparkle knowingly. 

"Are there any other kind?"

Sometimes, their conversation lapses into silence. It's usually when he's speaking that her eyes get a faraway look, and she just stares at him. He tries not to notice the glisten that forms on her lashes.

Other times, he is chilled by her tone. As he reminisces fondly about them saving Downing Street, she interrupts him, saying, "Right. With Harriet Jones." Her eyes are flat, and angry, so he changes the subject quickly.

Before they know it, the light through the windows is fading, Rose's stomach is growling needily, and the Doctor's isn't being particularly quiet either. He'd forgotten all about the chips earlier.

"Hungry?" she asks. "My flat's right 'round the block. We could go eat something. Maybe have a cuppa."

The Doctor is right about to protest when he realizes that the TARDIS is in no state to provide them with the tools to make dinner, and he's got no money to buy anything anyway.

"What? Nowhere to get chips around here?" He jokes, getting creakily to his feet. They've been sitting for hours and his joints have gone uncharacteristically stiff, unused to so much inactivity. But Rose had barely removed her hand from his for more than a second in what had been about six hours. They'd been nearly perfectly still. (He wonders if he'd ever sat still that long in all of his lives. Probably not.)

Rose grins weakly. "None that are any good. Rubbish chips here - too much salt, not enough vinegar."

"Can't have that," he replies cheerfully, extending his arm out to her. "Your place it is!" Her eyes dart to his sleeve.

She reaches for him, sort of stroking the leather beneath his forearm. A moment of silence passes.

"I miss this coat," she says, and her voice is thick and heavy and _aching_  and next thing he knows, she's clinging onto him, with her face buried in leather. He can feel the little shudders in her chest, the irregularity of her speeding, single heartbeat.

His arms wind around her, slowly. He's cautious. He's only see Rose like this once, and it was after seeing her own father die and nearly ending the world. She'd clung to him on the TARDIS, that day, apologies and promises pouring from her mouth.

And now, she's crying like that... over a _coat_. 

He wonders again how he came to do this to her. Whether he shouldn't take her somewhere else, away from him.

"S'alright, Rose," he mumbles into her hair, her strange brown hair that doesn't seem like her at all, and yet more like her than she's ever been. It smells the same. Like how it smells when she's fallen asleep on his shoulder in the library, midway through a chapter of Dickens. Like home. He wonders how she came to have the same shampoo in a parallel universe.

He thinks that maybe it was never the shampoo. Maybe it was always just Rose.

And then he delivers perhaps the most domestic sentence in the entirety of his vocabulary: "Let's go get you some tea."

Perhaps she can sense how strange it is for him to say, because when she looks up at him, with her eyeliner smudged and her tear-coated lashes fluttering, she _laughs_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They're warming up...
> 
> (Also, at risk of disappointing anyone, I'll just say that we won't be seeing much more of Ten until the end of this story. Sorry! This is primarily a Nine x Rose story.)
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We end the first day with a bit of reflection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As usual, I don't own any part of this other than the mistakes.

**2011\. Day One.**

The inside of Rose's flat is nothing like her chaotic, pink monstrosity of a room back at Jackie's on her original Earth, or even like the cozy, yellow-hued nook the TARDIS created for her as a home away from home. This place is all cool neutrals - there's a greyish-purple tone to the walls, and gunmetal furniture - and straight lines. And unlike her usual wont, there's very little clutter, except for a few miscellaneous odds and ends, things that seem horrifically out of place in such an otherwise spartan space. Most of the oddness is clustered on the coffee table.

There are a few books that look old - too old to have come from anywhere on Earth. A few pieces of _decidedly_  alien tech, two of which look like primitive variations on a transmat device. And there's one item that looks like a necklace, only it can't be, because it would be quite a hideous one, and rather large. It's bright yellow in the middle. And then there's a notebook - or perhaps a sketchbook - open to a half-filled page.

Before he can survey the room any further, Rose steps in front of him. "Close your eyes. I don't want you to accidentally see anything... y'know, problematic."

He obeys. With his eyes closed, he can hear her walking around the room, moving things, presumably closing the notebook. He hears the sound of her jacket sliding off of her shoulders. And then her hands are back in his, warm and small and steady.

"You can look now," she says, her voice smiling.

When he opens his eyes, the suspicious clutter is gone and Rose is beaming in front of him, in a peachy-colored vest. The holster around her leg is gone, too.

His eyes skitter away from her and back towards the cleared coffee table. "You leave _alien tech_  strewn about in your flat? Talk about taking work home with you!" He pins her with a look that can't help but convey his curiosity. "I don't suppose you care to tell me where exactly you discovered an Arcturan helium regenerator."

Rose has the decency to look embarrassed. "I'm not just dodging the question when I say I can't tell you, Doctor." Her grin begins to appear, almost despite herself, and she continues, "Let's say that I didn't exactly _steal_  them, but I'm also not necessarily s'posed to have them here... at my flat. Same with what's in the holster, which I know you noticed." She pauses, plucking at the cuffs of his leather sleeves. "Well, that one I _absolutely_ knicked. But you can't get a squareness gun just anywhere, y'know, and it's rather handy for quick... erm, redecorating."

The Doctor can't help the approving look on his face. "You little rebel," he chuckles. "Alright then, let's get the tea on."

But they both know that he's a tornado in the kitchen, so she heads in herself, after slipping off her boots. Her socks, he notices with a smile, are bright pink with tiny, white sheep all over. Pure Rose. As he trails behind her, she commands, "Shoes off, if you please. I've got a safety deposit I want back, and I won't have anyone - not even a Lord of Time - scuffing my floors." Over her shoulder, she winks. He obediently bends over to unlace his boots. "Apparently, they're pre-war original. What war, you ask? No idea! History's mad here."

"They're lovely," the Doctor comments blandly. "I'm sure someone with a faintest idea of this planet's local history would be mightily impressed." He sinks down onto her couch - a blessed uncomfortable thing with a rumpled throw blanket over the back, as well as an equally rumpled pillow that seems to have come from her bed. He settles back into it, taking in the familiar scent of Rose. He wonders with displeasure if she's been sleeping on this couch.

When she re-enters bearing tea - with her hair tied back and little escaped strands hanging forward, and her tongue in her teeth, and the socks, and the way her whole body is leaning towards him - he pats the spot next to him because he suddenly needs her near him. Just absolutely _needs_. It's an impulse he so rarely gives into, but he can't resist it tonight.

She doesn't hesitate.

 

  
"Doctor?" she asks. They've been sitting together on the couch for quite a long time; it must be near curfew now, which she's loosely explained to him, along with some of the other rules in this parallel world. They've gravitated closer to one another through the evening, first with his arm slung over the back of the sofa, and then her head nestled into his shoulder, and then her arm tucked around his waist, fingers eventually hidden in the leather of his jacket. She can't seem to stop touching him, her hands drifting wherever strikes her fancy, and she does so with the confidence of a woman who knows her touch is welcome.

Her hands graze his jumper, his jacket, his hands, even his face, if he lets her - which he mostly does, because he can see how much reassuring she needs. It's all over her face, even now, as she whispers, "When you go back, to check on the power supply... can I come with you? Can I sleep on the TARDIS, in my old room?" Her voice is still and small over the sound of raindrops - big, fat ones that patter against the windows.

Tension ripples through his body and he sets down the book he's been reading to her - one from this universe's version of Charles Dickens. (It isn't much like the original, and he doesn't hesitate to point that fact out at every available opportunity.)

_Her old room._

He can't help thinking of the reality of the time that's passed, that's been lost. For her, the TARDIS is nothing more than a memory. She's made a life here.

And for him, a human lifetime is just a song on an infinitely spinning record - beautiful, but always, unfailingly brief. It's why he leaves, or pushes them until they leave. He likes to skip ahead, fast-forward over the painful parts.

He's never before stopped to think that he could be like that himself.

A relic from her time with the Doctor, that's all he was. A diary entry. A photograph in a scrapbook that she can never really show anyone or speak of. A song she hears, and then it's gone - skip to the next track, to the next album.

Is _he_  just a blip on _her_ timeline?

She wants to go back with him, to his ship, and play the song again. That much he sees in her probing, hopeful gaze. But does she really want to come back, for good? Leave this new place behind, return to the same old song? Maybe he misjudged the crowded sky and the posh city and the sleek clothing - maybe she'd made her home here.

He wonders now if he'd misjudged that first look, that face like she'd seen a ghost. She hadn't been pleased. She hadn't been excited or even frightened. She'd seemed... almost angry, like he was a vengeful spirit returning to disrupt her peace.

The thoughts race through his head, and then leave in a flash. He hasn't answered her.

"Yeah, 'course. I've no idea how you left it on _his_ TARDIS, but..."

"It's alright," she cuts in quickly. "It doesn't matter, I just... miss it. Miss being there sometimes."

The Doctor nods. He understands, because he can't sleep right if he's away from his ship. He wants to mention the sheet on the couch, the crumpled pillow, but instead he says, "You can come, but you know I wouldn't just leave without telling you, Rose. You _know_  that, yeah?"

She hesitates. Nods.

"Oh, don't tell me I start..." He throws his hands in the air before settling on the next word, "abandoning you places, like some kind of shitty... boyfriend at a club."

She blushes.

"Rassilon help me," he groans. His hands fall to his face, scrubbing at his brow. "In my next life, I'm a _tosser_."

"No," Rose hurries to say. "You're just... easily distracted. By women, especially. Well, that was mostly just the one time. Well, no, you're always distracted by women, but you don't usually abandon me on derelict cannibal spaceships over it." Her eyes widen as she realizes her blunder. "Hypothetically."

He feels a pinching pain at the back of his skull, a tension that shouldn't be there. He tries to quiet the sensation by rubbing the back of his head and firmly deciding, _I'll forget this. It's basically already forgotten._ There's a ringing in his ears, which then dissipates.

She's staring at him, obviously worried and nibbling on her lip so hard he think she might bleed.

"It's fine, Rose," he sighs, resigned to what he's going to have to do. "I'm not gonna remember any of this anyway. I'll lock all the memories before I go back to 2005."

"Oh. Okay." Her voice sounds absolutely miserable, and it's no wonder. She's probably thinking this is the last bit of time they'll have together - the last dance to the old song - and he can't even let himself remember it. He wants to reach over and touch her hand, which is tremblingly pressed to her mouth; he wants to figure out what she's feeling.

The Doctor opens his mouth to say something, but he can't decide what he wants to tell her. He closes his mouth and passes another hand over his face.

She clears her throat. "Anyway, Doctor, it's nearly curfew. We should really get going back to the TARDIS." When she stands, she is steady. All traces of discomfort seem to disappear from her face. She has that blank, bland look in her eye that makes him want to tear his own hearts out." I'll just tidy up and we can go."

He practically jumps up after her. "You cooked. I'll wash," he says, trying to infuse some cheer into his tone.

"Isn't that a bit _domestic_?" she asks, her brow arched in amusement. Her mouth lingers around his least favorite word, curving into a shadow of a smile.

"New universe, new me," he chirps back. "But hey, if you don't want the help..."

Their little stand-off is broken when she hands him back his empty plate and gestures to the kitchen, still looking rather sardonic and more than a bit disbelieving.

They set about cleaning up the remnants of their dinner - some kind of curry she'd whipped up, with rice and vegetables. He'd been a bit amazed by her cooking, and he tells her so as he scrubs out a bowl. "Whatever you put in that sauce, it was brilliant," he says, focused on the dishes he's washing. "Tastes a bit like this one little shop I used to love, back in the sixties. In Punjab. You'd love it, just as thick, only... maybe a bit spicier. Though everything tastes a bit odd here..."

The sleeves of his purple jumper are rolled up around his forearms, and he has a tea towel slung over his shoulder and he suddenly feels like Rose's eyes are on him. He glances over at her, where she's perched up on the counter, drying a dish and staring at him like she's never seen him in her life.

Blinking herself out of whatever reverie she'd been lost in, she informs him that he's really been missing out, what with not having a rice cooker onboard the TARDIS. And also that she's been to Punjab, once. For work.

"Tell me about it," he invites.

When they're finished, she zips on her jacket and pulls on her boots. "C'mon, then!" she cries, practically shoving him out of the doorway. "Back to the TARDIS!" And he can tell she's just so pleased to say the word, the name of his ship - and it makes his hearts lurch.

"Fantastic," he says, smiling just a bit. And they're off. Running in the rain, hand in hand.

 _Once more, with feeling,_  he thinks. Glen Miller plays in his head as they run, her heartbeat an accompanying rhythm.

 

  
But things are not fantastic.

Aside from arriving soaked to the bone to a worn-out TARDIS that can't provide fresh, warm towels and a change of clothes, his little charging rig is puttering along - at nearly a quarter of the intended speed.

"AA battery indeed," he grouches. "Surely the idiot was being hyperbolic, because at this rate, even with a significantly bigger battery, I'll be grounded for days!"

Rose has the good sense to look worried. "He sent you with an Earth battery?" she says wonderingly.

"I brought a good old 21st century car battery, yeah," he replies grumpily.

"But last time, he used regeneration energy! And it still took an entire 24-hour loop to charge."

When he turns to look at her, he feels a bit wild and very, very irritated. "Regeneration energy? What kind of irresponsible...?!" And then he's stomping around the TARDIS. "Well, if he's already shunted off chunks of our lifespan, I can't exactly afford to do it again for a lark. Plus, the exchange isn't exactly precise..." and then he's off, grumbling again, because he can't help ranting at the moron he is doomed to eventually become.

"So, what do we do?" Rose asks calmly.

The Doctor looks at her in dismay. "We wait. And hope that we don't do or say anything to _disintegrate the fabric of time itself_  while we wait. Though I'm not even sure that reapers exist in this universe, I'm not exactly an expert on parallel universes..."

"Lovely," she replies, her ensuing grin cheeky. "Best get some sleep while we wait, then. It's nearly midnight."

"D'you need help getting back to your room? She can't exactly guide you at the moment."

Her grin expands until she’s positively beaming in the dim red light of the console room. “Worried I can’t find my way in the dark, Doctor?” She laughs and her hand strokes gently over a coral strut. The red emergency lights flare a bit - just the length of a heartbeat - and once again, the Doctor is baffled by how responsive his TARDIS is to her.

He opens his mouth to say something, to ask a question that could - maybe, possibly, he's beginning to hope that it won't, but still, it could - literally unravel time, and stops. In the corner of his eye, she's laughing again.

“Sorry, Doctor. You’ll have to wait and see.” As she turns to head down the dim hallway, she looks over her shoulder and says, “I’ll give you a hint, though: you’re _not_  gonna like it.” And then her brash laugh drifts down the hallway, as she disappears into near perfect darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second day brings some... clarification.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, as you can see, this update is a week late and I heartily apologize! The chapter needed a bit more reworking than I anticipated, and I got quite busy with life things, and finally, I ended up with the flu! Not fun. But I did manage to whip this chapter into some semblance of a shape. (Including a bit of Rose perspective, since I needed a bit of a break from the Doctor's brooding!) 
> 
> As usual, the only thing I own are my own silly mistakes - grammatical, and otherwise.
> 
> Hope you all enjoy and have a wonderful week! Hopefully, I can keep to my schedule better in the coming weeks.

**2011\. Day Two.**

The wall. Always that goddamn white wall with nothing and everything on the other side. It was why she'd painted her flat as soon as she'd moved in, uncaring of the color so long as it wasn't that blistering, empty white.

But it's back. The wall, starkly staring down at her as she bruises her hands against it. "Take me back," she sobs. "Take me back, _please_ , take me back..." The words pour out of her before she can stop them - all the things she hadn't said that day, would never get to say, all the guilt that claws at her throat. "I'm sorry! Doctor, I'm so sorry and I didn't mean to leave! I promised I wouldn't, you have to know - I never would, I never, ever would... I'm sorry, I couldn't hold on, Doctor. Please, if you come back, I'll hold on tighter. Give me another chance, I'll stay, I promise, just let me come back. Let me..."

" _Rose_ ," says a voice behind her back. A voice she knows and doesn't know.

She turns, tears still streaming down her cheeks. He's standing alone, pinstriped and tall, with his back to the window and his face like a mask. Rose doesn't think of where her mum or Mickey or Pete went. All that matters is him being here. Now.

Breathlessly, she speaks. "Doctor. How?"

When he answers, his voice is quiet and lethal. "Do you know what I did, Rose? To come get you, do you have any idea what I had to do?" He steps closer to her, and that's when she notices that his eyes aren't his eyes at all. They're blue.

"Doctor, please--"

"I had to crack open the universe until it bled, so that I could enter the wound," he hisses between clenched teeth. She's never seen him so livid, and certainly not with her. "I had to destroy both worlds. We're all that's left - here and now, you and I, on this foolish little city that's about to sink into the sea, and for what? To get you. Just because you've got sweaty palms."

She wants to turn and run, to close her eyes and make him disappear. She'd rather be begging for his return than for her prayer to be answered with such venom. But she can't run or hide, she simply steps toward him.

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

"You're _sorry?_ " he mocks. "That's all, is it? I'm supposed to just forgive you and move on? Well, we can't move on, Rose! There's nowhere to go! I destroyed both bloody universes to get here!" Her shoulders curl in, trying to protect her from the assault of his words. "Rassilon, Rose, I'm always cleaning up your messes, aren't I? Killing myself to clean up your paradoxes. Dying to get the vortex out of you." He's towering over her now, and she feels trapped between the white wall and the black pupils of his eyes, which have swallowed the blue.

"Doctor," she chokes out, but it's useless, because he's speaking again.

"You destroy everything you touch, Rose Tyler. Do you know what you did when you had the vortex in you? You killed the entire Dalek fleet." His tone is cold, biting. "Genocide. You destroyed an entire species."

"But... I saved those people. I..." Her voice is weak and small, and she feels like a mere shadow of a creature as she sobs, "I bring life."

"No, Rose," the Doctor answers. "You destroy."

Behind her, the wall cracks. 

 

 

 

Her ascent into consciousness is rapid and automatic. Days spent out in the field, nights of interrupted sleep, and over a year of training propel her out of bed and to her feet, hand reaching for the gun she'd tucked under her pillow.

Not her usual pillow. This one is pink, with little white flowers on it.

Like she'd had on the TARDIS, once.

She's already pointing the gun at the source of the noise when she looks up from the pillow. It's him. Only... younger. Still blue-eyed, though he isn't looking at her with venom.

She catches his glance, sees his knuckles against the door, senses the tension in his posture.

"Rose," he says. _You destroy_ , she hears.

She's just in her vest from yesterday and underwear. She can tell that he's trying not to look, but his eyes keep darting from the gun to the slip of silky fabric, a deep purple so as to be nearly black. Her hair is up in a messy bun that's half fallen out from all the tossing in her sleep, and the tendrils tickle her shoulders. But she's not deterred. She always thinks the dreams are real.

They're not.

Her job requires an attention to detail that often translates into her dreams. She hates how often she fools herself.

Her hands don't shake, and the gun remains pointed at the alien who calls himself the Doctor. 

"Doctor," she says quietly. "Are you real?"

"Yes." His blue eyes are so sad and worried that she starts to wonder if she got it wrong. No anger. No destroyed universes.

Maybe she's awake. Maybe she's really here.

"Am I really on the TARDIS?" 

His whole expression is pained. "Yes, Rose."

And it's the eyes that convince her - no anger or unkindness lurks in them. Just that familiar, aching sadness. She drops the gun back onto the bed and sighs. 

"Well, that answers that, I guess. Just being on board doesn't stop the nightmares. I must need the engine noise. Or maybe it's just been too long..." Her thoughts drift for a moment before she pulls herself back to the present - to him and his brief sojourn in her world. 

Because she needs her armor back - and to pretend like nothing's happened - she begins to slide on her clothes. Yesterday's trousers are shimmied up over her hips before she glances back at the door, where the Doctor is still standing. He stares at her like he's never seen her before, and it's not the first time he's looked that way since landing yesterday. She knows he sees the changes in her.

She tries not to wonder what he thinks of them.

Rose reaches for her bra, crumpled on the floor, and glances up at him with a glint of humor in her eye. "Staying for the show, Doctor?"

The Doctor isn't a man who scurries, but he's so flushed and uncomfortable, he practically scuttles away.

 

 

 

He's spent all night fiddling with the battery, pushing its capabilities as far as he dares, but even then, it's clear that the rest of the charge cycle will take about forty hours. As he paces the grating and she watches him from her normal spot on the jump seat, Rose wonders what the other him was thinking of, sending him with such a weak power source.

Maybe he hadn't been thinking at all.

Either way, that's nearly two more days with him here, in her world.

She hates herself for it, but she's actually looking forward to this time, no matter what heartbreak awaits her at the end. The man standing in front of her is like a time capsule, holding within him secrets and memories that she'd never had the chance to excavate. She wants to pursue those answers she'd never had the courage to seek. She wants to hide secrets within him, to take back to the prime universe, so she can know they're safe and where they belong - with the man she loves, a world away.

But instead of giving into the impulse, she leaps out of the jump seat and makes for the door. "Well, no use standing here when there's a whole world I could show you," Rose says cheerfully. "For once, I'm the expert!" She can't tell if he's amused or perturbed by her claim to expertise.

When they step off the TARDIS, it's a beautiful and clear day outside. Hand and hand, they set off along the Thames, with no particular destination in mind. The dirigibles float overhead like so many fish out in open water, and as the Doctor's blue eyes turn up to reflect the sky, he says, "I'll bite. What's with all the zeppelins?"

"No Hindenburg crash here," she explains. "They just... kept using them, I guess. They're awful." She can't help sighing at the memory of unobstructed sky, or better, the infinity of space spread out all around the TARDIS' open doors.

The Doctor clearly agrees, his brow furrowed as he glances back at her. "You can hardly see the stars at night."

"No," Rose concurs, "not unless you get far out into the country. Or near the sea." The memory triggers in her mind from Bad Wolf Bay - the Doctor disappearing into thin air, not even leaving behind footprints for the tide to wash away. Her eyes start to fill with tears, and she forcefully blinks them away. Last time, she'd only had two minutes and she'd squandered them. She has forty hours now and won't make the same mistake.

She suddenly notices that he's gone quiet, and he's doing that staring-but-trying-not-to-look-at-her thing. His posture is angled away from her, despite their joined hands.

"Doc-" she begins.

"So, how were we, Rose?" he interrupts. The question surprises her, and it must show on her face. He hurries to continue. "I can't really keep anything you tell me, of course, but it would be nice to hear about it anyway."

"You're sure you want to know?"

She can't believe he's really risking this, just to know about her future. His future. _Their_  future.

"I'm sure," he answers. "I'd like to know what I have to look forward to." And she notices the sharp set of his eyes, the glint that he only gets when he's very serious. Or occasionally when he's using his curiosity to cover something else - an emotion he'd never admit to.

It looks an awful lot like jealousy.

He's jealous of himself, of the man who gets her next.

She can't decide how to begin answering such a large question. They were, in short, everything. The stuff of legends. But they were also riddled with problems that there'd never been enough time to resolve - and words left unsaid, always to remain unsaid.

"We're - we _were_ \- alright," she finally replies, her tone deceptively neutral. But she's looking out over the water, avoiding his eyes. This, at least, is familiar. She and the Doctor had never been good at addressing the big things. "You and I, we're always alright, Doctor." And then she looks over at him and grins like she believes it. For a moment, she almost does.

The tightness in his eyes seems to give way a bit, and she's glad she could provide him with some sense of relief. It's just like this version of him to be so concerned and so terrified of showing it. 

"Am I...?" he says, then hesitates. She's not used to hearing that gruff, Northern voice sounding uncertain.

"Are you what?" she prompts when the silence has gone too long.

He clears his throat. "Am I good to you? The other me."

Her eyes start to fill with tears and she knows it won't be the last time, not while he's here, so close, loving her in that quiet way that she can practically feel like a current on his skin. She misses that, about him specifically. Her other Doctor was so much more tactile and sporadic, and so were his feelings for her - wild, unfocused, sudden. Like a tidal wave. This Doctor's heart is as steady as the moon that guides the ocean.

Rose notices that her lack of an answer has made him worried, brought the tense little wrinkle back between his eyes. She sniffs back her tears, tries to dredge up some levity, and a smile blooms on her lips.

"Doctor, I won't pretend you were an easy man to live with. Sometimes, you felt so alien to me that I wanted to paint you green and glue on little spikes or something, so that you'd _look_ as mad as you feel." She chuckles and it's a watery sound. "Sometimes you're careless. Sometimes," she laughs again, even more breathlessly, "you're rude. But mostly you're brilliant." She relishes the feeling of his cool hand in hers and squeezes, releasing every ounce of emotion that she _knows_  he can feel flowing out of her, pulsing in her fingertips. 

Between her ribs, her heart wants to beat out of her chest and into his. She exhales on a sigh and gives him her very best and most beatific smile. "And you were so, so good to me. You _always_ were."

She sees it then. The relief. The letting go of what was clearly a very intense fear. She can't imagine him thinking so poorly of himself as to assume he'd treat her _badly_  just because he had a different face. Still, she knows he isn't too far off the mark with his fear - the snogging random women and the flirting and the not-so-accidental abandoning and the practically flying away from anything resembling a real conversation is most decidedly a next-Doctor trait. He is a changed man. Always a changing man. And he fears what he might become.

"I am certainly not always good to you," he smirks, breaking the tension. "Better take off those _rose_ -tinted glasses, Rose Tyler."

"No, but I wasn't always good to you either," she answers slowly, thoughtfully. "In fact... I never got to say... I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For killing you. Twice." When his eyes start to dilate with worry, she squeezes his hand again. "Don't worry, I won't tell you anything specific. Just that... both times, you died because I didn't listen to you."

He suddenly snorts. "You never listen to me."

"No," she answers quietly. "And those times, it cost you so much, me wanting to be right, to be able to handle it." She smiles, more to bolster herself than him. "But don't worry. You come out alright in the end. You always do," and she grins, her tongue poking out from between her teeth. "In fact, you've already lived through the one that's _all_  my fault. The second time... well, you'll just have to wait and see."

"You know that isn't fair, Rose," the Doctor gripes good-naturedly. "You've got privileged information!"

When she laughs, it's a more lively sound than she's let out in ages. "Don't I just? Oh, the things I could tell you, Doctor." She's feeling pleased that they're back on solid conversational ground, and she's not sure what's come over her, but she adds, "The things we've _done_ together."

She's teasing him and they both know it, but that doesn't stop the way his eyes hang on her mouth for just a second too long, and the way his Adam's apple bobs as he swallows and says, "Oh?"

It's apparently all his enormous Time Lord brain can come up with to say.

Her answering grin is filthy, and the way his eyes catch on her tongue again sends a wave of _something_ through her chest and down into her belly, where it flexes and coils and feels suspiciously like want.

She wonders if he feels it rolling off of her in waves, if he can identify it in her. Their relationship had never been like that - perfectly chaste in every way, and she'd had a hell of a time maintaining that boundary.

Anyway, how she'd felt for him... well, it had practically just gotten started when this body was killed. It might be totally unfamiliar to him.

He swallows again.

_Or perhaps not._

And then she finds herself speaking again, mercifully of random things and not of the simmering feeling that's taken up residence in her stomach. 

"I've broken you out of jail, and not just once. Imagine! Me, flirting _you_ out of prison for once! I've seen you - not in this body, of course, which is a wicked shame - strip-searched by a Judoon. God, but you were red all over! And I mean it," she enunciates slowly, "all over." That feeling of mischief and joy overtakes her, widening her smile. "But then, I wasn't the only one who got a show. I still can't believe you thought hiding the sonic _on me_ was a good idea! Foolish man. Apparently, the Judoon have very little interest in the preservation of female modesty."

She squeezes his hand, noticing his glazed expression. "Doctor, d'you mind me telling you all this? I'm just... I was trying to cheer you up a bit, with good future memories. But if it isn't--"

"Rose," he cuts in. "In your time, are we...?"

She looks at him seriously. "You're sure you want to know? Just to forget it later?"

He nods, slowly.

"No, Doctor. We aren't," she exhales. "The next you is a shameful flirt, like I said. You're always off, falling in love with people and worlds and species. And I know you care about me, I do." She squeezes his hand. "But I also know... well, Doctor, if you want the honest truth, I met Sarah Jane."

He looks shocked. "Sarah Jane Smith?" 

Her answering smile is weak, but she manages to keep it afloat. "The one and only. And she's brilliant, I have her mobile number and everything - not that my phone works anymore, not here, rubbish thing. But anyway, she's also why I realized that I could keep promising you my forever until I was blue in the face, but you'd never take it. Which is okay, Doctor. I understand now. You lose all of us eventually." Her free hand drifts up to his cheek. "You great big lump," she says affectionately. "You and your big, soft hearts. You love all of us, and you lose us. And I'm one of so many that you've lost."

She's been practicing this in her mind for nearly a year now. How she'd express her forgiveness for the things he's done and left undone, and how she'd tell him it was all alright, that she understood now. Everything has its time and everything dies - even the adventure of a lifetime.

But the Doctor is just staring at her. She can see the thoughts churning in his mind and tries to stay quiet while he processes what she's told him.

When he answers, it's not what she expected.

"No, Rose," he practically growls. "You don't understand. _He_  sent me to you."

Her hand drops from his face and she steps back, unsure of what he's trying to say to her. "I know. And I'll... I'll always appreciate it. You were... well, you are... the first face I... Well, you're you." She huffs out a sigh. "You're a lunatic for risking it, and I've no idea how you managed to get here, but... Doctor?" His jaw is clenched. "Doctor, what is it?"

"Headache," he grinds out, before continuing. "I told you. Your pretty future boyfriend - because I don't care what you say, _he_  certainly thinks you're together, it's all over his fool face - sent me back for you. He couldn't come himself; hell, he could barely get away with finding and sending me. He built a contingency plan that would access his own personal timeline, Rose. He constructed a whole paradox to keep you safe." He's staring into her eyes, and they're deep and fathom less. "You can go home, Rose. I can bring you back to him."

Her whole world shrinks to the space between them - the determined look in his eyes that says he's serious and her own heartbeat, racing. "I'm going home?"

"You're going home," he affirms quietly - and tenderly, so tenderly that the softness of it nearly knocks her off her feet.

It's strange how she doesn't feel herself moving, doesn't feel anything at all except for the sensation of floating. She doesn't feel her feet lurching towards him, or the leather clenched under her fingers.

But she does feel the cool shock of his skin as her lips press to his.

She's kissing him. She's kissing her Doctor, who is bringing her home.

_I'm going home._

He tastes different than he did on the Gamestation - that kiss had held an underlying bite, the sharpness of time threatening to break out and ravage them both. The flavor still lingers around the edges, no doubt from him recently traveling through the void, or maybe he always tastes this dangerous, but it's mostly him that she's lost in. The flavor of him. The Doctor, as indefinable and wonderful as anything she'd ever eaten on an alien world. His mouth reminds her of spicy cocoa and very old book pages, and she isn't sure how that manages to be a good thing, but it is. _Oh, it is._

He never quite relaxes into the kiss, which is what ultimately reminds her of who she is and who _he_  is and what they're doing and where and--

_I'm going home, I'm going home, I'm going home..._

When he pulls back from her, he's holding his head and wincing. "Paradox," he grunts. "Rose, if this is some barmy human way of showing gratitude--"

"I'm sorry," she hurries to reply. "I shouldn't have. God, when will I ever learn? Don't touch the baby!"

The Doctor shakes his head as the tension leaves his face. "It's fine. I can compartmentalize it. Just... don't do that again, unless we're on the TARDIS."

"Is that an invitation?" she asks with a giggle, unable to contain her giddiness. 

She can't think of anything but...  _I'm going home._

"You wish, Rose Tyler. Buy me dinner first," the Doctor replies with a wink. "I can process a lot of things, but that much chemical output can't really happen out here, in this world. I can't lock it away fast enough. It'll be better once we're on the ship again."

"See, that definitely sounds like an invitation," she flirts, still trying to catch up with her racing emotions.

_I'm going ho- oh, God._

Her face falls. "Doctor. My mum."

"What about her?" he huffs.

"She's here. I'll have to... I'll have to say goodbye." Her voice picks up speed as the anxiety begins to gnaw at her insides. "We need to go see her - right now. I need to tell her, I can't just... leave. Oh, God. My _mum_. She won't understand, she'll be furious! And Pete. And Tony."

"Rose," the Doctor replies, reaching out to steady her. Her fingers twine with his automatically, and she tries not to let her panic hammer out through her nerve endings. His voice as low as he says, "Slow down. We can go right now."

"But she hates you."

He snorts. "What else is new?"

"No, Doctor," she replies, unsure of how to explain. There's so much she doesn't want to say, because he has enough guilt as it is, but she presses on. "I mean... she _really_  hates you. For leaving me."

When she looks up at the Doctor, his eyes are sharp. "Well, we have that in common, at least."

 

 

 

**2006/Nowhen.**

It's been ten minutes and eighteen seconds.

He's terrible at waiting. He's never been good at it - not in any iteration or body - and the fact that he's waiting for either Rose or the complete collapse of his timeline doesn't help. The impatience, the panic bubbles up until he thinks he might explode. And then comes the headache.

It's an absolutely searing pain that would knock any other being to its knees, but instead, he tries to brace himself against the console. "What is he doing?" he grunts.

The TARDIS hums, beneath his feet and through the walls. She's singing to him, trying to leech away some of the headache. As his head starts to dull, so too does his vision. He tries to remain upright, muttering something like, "No. No, I have to wait. I have to meet them."

But it's too late; she's singing him to sleep.

On his tongue, he tastes something sweet and musky, like a very ripe apple. Like a kiss with an open mouth.

And then he slides to the floor, unconscious.

His brilliant, sentient timeship rumbles in a sort of chuckle. Her lights flash, and if anyone had been paying attention to her, they'd find the flashes decidedly smug.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Tyler women get their say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back with a new chapter, and I'm feeling significantly healthier than last week! Thank you to everyone who wished me well.

**2011\. Day Two.**  
  
Once they are standing on the doorstep of the Tyler mansion, the thousand-year-old Time Lord is no longer able to contain his discomfort. As much as he wants to be supportive of Rose, as much as he recognizes that he owes Jackie Tyler an explanation, he can't help crossing his arms over his chest in discomfort. "This is a terrible idea, Rose," he says gruffly. "You said it yourself; your mum _hates_ me."  
  
Rose rolls her eyes in a way that suddenly reminds him that no matter how battle-hardened she might appear, she's just a girl barely out of her teens. She's still so young, every bit like his Rose back home - always rolling those caramel-colored eyes and batting those long lashes and sticking out that alarmingly attractive tongue that he now knows the flavor of. His tongue flicks out to taste his lips, picking up the residual taste of Rose, and then he catches her looking at him. Grinning.  
  
"I may have been wrong," Rose admits, pushing the doorbell. (She has a key, but she's doing it for effect. He knows she loves the drama of it all. Her long lost space boyfriend, back from the dead to rescue her. Once again, he finds himself shuddering at the wrongness of this whole place and time and situation.) She continues conversationally, almost emulating the tone and style of her mother, if a bit more manic. "In fact, now that she's seen what future you gets up to, she might even like you - well, this version. You know what I mean. Seeing as how you only _sort of_ broke my heart. The other you positively tore it to pieces, bless him."  
  
He wants to say something about breaking her heart, ask her what she means. What could he possibly do in the future, to his precious girl? But she doesn't give him time; she's already speaking again. "You let me do the explaining, alright? She's probably going to have... questions."  
  
"Oh, I'm more than happy to let you do the talking," he replies quickly. "In fact, I could wait somewhere else while you--"  
  
But it's too late.  
  
The double doors swing wide, and there stands one Jackie Tyler, looking the same as ever, only perhaps her dressing gown is a bit larger and, on the whole, so is she. And she's holding... a baby?  
  
The Doctor's mouth falls open. "Did you _procreate_?"  
  
Rose snorts.  
  
"I beg your pardon?" And with her unexpectedly free hand, Jackie Tyler delivers one of her uniquely forceful slaps to the Doctor's cheek. Before he can recover from the whiplash, she's using that same hand to drag him into an awkward sort of half-hug, making sure she doesn't jostle the baby. As she releases him, he notices that she's already taken up a steady stream of chatter.  
  
"God, but you're rude! Back from the dead, and still rude. Of course I 'procreated' - as you so _crassly_ put it - and you like the one I made the first time well enough, so there's no need to look shocked about it! I'm capable of raising another child!" Jackie practically shouts into his ear, pulling him bodily into the house. And then she turns to Rose. "An absolute arsehole, Rose, I've no idea what you saw in him. Or see in him now. Or saw in the other him, that stupid wanker... Well, no sense talking about _him_." The Doctor winces, and Rose tries and fails to hold back another undignified snort. Jackie finally lets him out of her python-like grasp. "But I missed you, you daft alien, Lord help me. So, explain to me how in the hell you're here and what you intend to do with my daughter. I can see plain as plain that you're up to something."  
  
"Can we at least come in and sit down, Mum?" Rose asks with an impish smile.  
  
Jackie, blessedly quiet, moves aside and lets them both in. The Doctor lets Rose take his hand and lead him through.  
  
The mansion is enormous, but the Time Lord barely notices. His mind is too busy working overtime.  
  
The Doctor leans over to whisper in Rose's ear and notices the goosebumps that rise on her neck as he says, "That is _her_ baby, yeah? Not... someone else's? _Hers_?"  
  
Rose smirks and whispers back, "Why on earth would she be holding someone else's baby?" He can tell by her devilish expression that she's enjoying his extreme discomfort.  
  
"Well, I just thought... Rose, you've got to admit that she's a bit old for that sort of thing--"  
  
"Sex, you mean?"  
  
He nearly chokes, and when he glances up at her eyes, they're positively sparkling. "No," he hisses. "I mean... babies. Anyway, it doesn't look a bit like her!"  
  
"He's not an it; he's called Tony," Rose chimes back.  
  
The Doctor rolls his eyes. "Oh, thanks, that clears things up."  
  
"Clears what up?" she laughs. "If you really want to, you can scan him with the sonic. I think you'll find he's fully human." She gives him a significant look. "No... alien DNA whatsoever." And then her voice drops to a whisper. "No TNA."  
  
Once again, he freezes mid-stride. Is that even possible? What does she mean? She can't possibly- "Rose Tyler. You're having a go at me!"  
  
"Of course I am, you nutter," Rose giggles. "He's called Tony, he's a perfectly normal human child, born to my mum and dad, Pete and Jackie Tyler. He isn't our alien lovechild, or Mickey's, or anything like that. God, you're as daft as I remember. You and I aren't _like_ that."  
  
"Good," the Doctor huffs. "And anyway, I'm not even sure if that would be possible. Human with some TNA thrown in. Probably wouldn't work." He nods firmly, trying to reassure himself. "Human baby, then."  
  
They're interrupted by a brassy voice from behind them. "Look at you two! Separated for two years - literally on different planes of reality for some of it - and here you are, thick as thieves all over again!" Jackie sounds good and irritated now as she leads them into the kitchen, where there's tea on, as usual. "And by the way, Doctor, I'll have you know that Tony _is_ my son, and I'll thank you not to even consider what I _know_ you're considering." To herself, she mumbles, "Pervert with a spaceship, I always said."  
  
"Mum," Rose sighs. "It wasn't like that, I've told you a hundred times. The Doctor is just being rude, as usual." She sits down at the oversized kitchen table, gesturing for the Doctor to sit beside her.  
  
"Right," he says quickly, embarrassed to even have been caught entertaining such a possibility. What has Rose's kiss done to his brain? Especially after she'd already _told_ him they had never been together, certainly not in that way. He drops into the seat next to Rose's. "I just... I thought that you were alone over here, the two of you."  
  
"No," Jackie says with a dreamy smile. "Pete's here."  
  
"Pete?" The Doctor repeats.  
  
"Yes," Rose answers. "My dad doesn't die in this world. And I, uh... never exist."  
  
"So that's what he meant by 'Pete's World,' then."  
  
"Who's 'he,' then?" Jackie snaps, suddenly on high alert. Her eyes are narrowed and Rose knows what's coming, based on the way she shifts uncomfortably in her seat. He reaches out to take her hand again, letting their fingers tangle loosely under the table. She gives him a quick glance of thanks, and he feels the discomfort radiating off of her dissipate.  
  
"Mum," Rose begins gently. "You know who he's talking about."  
  
The older woman sniffs and flips her dyed-blonde hair. Speaking through pursed lips, she says, "I'm sure I don't. He would know better than to come into this home and bring up that _git_ who nearly abandoned and then nearly killed and then actually _did_ abandon my daughter!"  
  
Jackie Tyler may not be the most logical woman, the Doctor notes, but she's good and terrifying when she's angry.  
  
"He's the same man!" Rose snaps. "And yeah, I'm angry too, Mum, but he - the Doctor right here - hasn't done any of that. Not yet. He's... he's taking a big risk coming to get me, to take me back!" He can feel Rose's grip tightening on his hand and he squeezes reassuringly.  
  
The kettle starts to whistle, a shrill sound that sends Tony into a fit of snuffling cries.  
  
"Oh, so _that's_ what this is! Come to tell me you're leaving then? Going back to himself, aren't you?" Jackie deftly plops the squalling baby into Rose's arms while she goes to heat up a bottle of milk and shut off the kettle, forcing her daughter to break contact with the Doctor. As she slams around the kitchen, Jackie continues, "You've no sense at all, Rose Tyler, going back there after all he's done. We've done this once before, I'll have you remember - went all the way to Norway, packed all your things up, just in case. We did it all proper, said our goodbyes, went as a family, traveled all that way, and for what? He just fades out of existence without so much as an apology! And you told me he didn't even have the guts to-"  
  
"That's enough, Mum," Rose interrupts grimly. "You're upsetting Tony."  
  
That's enough to quiet Jackie down for the moment, though she still slams the tap off with more intensity than is strictly necessary.  
  
Rose rocks Tony while he cries, and he begins to quiet down once Jackie's stopped banging about.

His Rose looks lovely - holding the baby and looking down at him with that vast sadness he's seen so much in the last twenty-four hours - and the Doctor remembers a distant feeling of familiarity. Of parenting. And then of looking down at Rose once, when she herself was just a baby.  
  
In a way, he'd known Rose her whole life. And now, she'd known him all of his - this life, anyway. She knew him from the time he'd woken up in this body to the moment he'd left it.  
  
She sighs, interrupting his thoughts. Her voice is thin as she says, "All that was a long time ago. You're the one who hasn't forgiven him, not me." The Doctor feels a pinch somewhere between his hearts.  
  
"You're making a mistake going back to him. What happens when he strands you somewhere else, somewhere without me and Pete, where you're all alone?"  
  
"He's sitting right here," Rose says through her teeth, looking back up at her approaching mother. "He didn't really abandon me, he never would."  
  
Jackie sweeps the baby out of Rose's arms and seems about to say something, but the Doctor takes this chance to interrupt. He wants to promise that he'll never abandon her; that he - in all bodies and forms - has learned his lesson. Rose is the most important being in all his lives, and he'd bent the rules of time to keep her with him. He needs her, he wants to explain, like breathing or like his heartsbeat or like the TARDIS. She's part of him.  
  
Instead, he says, "Your mum's right, you know." His voice breaks the rhythm of their argument, causing both women to turn toward him. Rose looks dismayed. Jackie looks, as usual, infuriated, until she realizes what he's saying.  
  
"What?" Rose whispers.  
  
"It would be better for you to stay here, with your family. You'll be safer. You have a life, a job. You're settled. You can find a human to marry, maybe pop out a few more Tylers."  
  
"Are you telling me to go forth, be fruitful, and multiply, Doctor?" Rose seethes. "Is your god complex really that massive, that you think you can dictate my future to me?"  
  
"No, Rose," he says sharply. "I'm simply presenting an alternative you might not have considered."  
  
She leaps out of her seat then. "Might not have-?" Rose sounds like she's about to have an aneurysm or something very like, her voice is so tight and strangled. He can see her face going red in a way he hasn't ever seen before. He's not sure she's been this angry with him - ever. And then she's pinching the bridge of her nose, which she never used to do, and he wonders where she got the habit.  
  
Quietly, she says, "Mum, can you give us a mo?" All too happily, Jackie hurries out of the room, abandoning him to his fate. The Doctor can tell she's a bit gleeful at him getting a dressing down.  
  
When she's sure her mother is gone, Rose lays into him. "An alternative I might not have considered? Jesus Christ, Doctor, a normal life is all I've considered! I've had nearly _two years_ to consider it, you absolute git."  
  
"Rose," he tries, but she waves a hand to cut him off.  
  
"No, Doctor. Shut up and listen. I've had nearly two years of working for the bloody government, nine to five with steady pay and going to the bar after work with the friends I've tried to make, despite the fact that I can't tell them anything about myself or they'll think I'm mental. Two years of coming to my Mum's for Sunday dinner, of going to Pete's work events and making nice with snobby businessmen because I'm some sort of long-lost heiress. Two years of being set up on _dates_ , Doctor!" She throws her hands in the air as if pleading with some deity above. "Dates! Me! On a sodding date with some poor, human bloke who has no idea what he's getting into, because it won't be his face I'm seeing if we shag, I'll tell you that." Her words end on a shout.  
  
The Doctor is starting to feel a knot grow in his stomach as Rose leans down on the table, her head in her hands. He watches her back expand and contract with steadying breaths. When she pushes herself back off the table and begins pacing again, it's clear she hasn't managed to calm down. In fact, her breaths are coming in heaving waves. He thinks she might be having a panic attack, but he doesn't have the chance to say so.  
  
"You sodding... you _idiot_ man!" she moans in frustration. "You've got no idea, have you? I've lived this life and I did my best at it - staying on the slow path. Picking at scraps of dead technology, trying to find my place in this universe. But you ruined me. You absolutely ruined me for a life lived in one place, on one planet, in one time. Do you understand? I can't sit still like this! It's... it's killing me! So, I deserve to make this choice for myself. And if you don't take me back, so help me God, I'll open up the TARDIS again and I'll go back myself, because you need me! _He_ needs me!" She's on the far side of the kitchen now, her hands pressed to her chest as she chases her breath.  
  
"What do you mean 'again,' Rose?" The Doctor asks, stepping toward her. His voice is deceptively calm, and a lesser woman than Rose Tyler would back down from it.  
  
"I'm not telling you," she says fiercely. "Paradoxes."  
  
Another step. "You said you opened up the TARDIS. I'm assuming that means you looked into the heart of my timeship, into the vortex?" Another step.  
  
He's close now, but Rose angles up her chin and says, "I'm not saying anything about it."  
  
"There are consequences to that, you know," he continues steadily, now standing less than a foot away from her. "I've been wondering about it since I saw you again. It's the eyes. Your eyes glow. There's gold in them. I should have known. _He_ should have known..." And he's right there, his eyes gazing into hers. He watches them swirl, the gold tumbling around in abyss of fiery brown. "Though, how could he know, if he woke up and it's all he's ever known, you looking that way? The memories get all mixed up and shuffled around, and it's hard to hang on to details."  
  
She practically spits the words as she says, "Are you coming 'round to a point soon, or are my domestics getting in the way of your scientific curiosity?"  
  
He turns around. "No, Rose, you're right. You have to go back. If the vortex is still inside you, you may well die tomorrow. Or live forever. Or grow another head. Or develop an alternate personality. Or regenerate. It's impossible to know, and you need me - well, the other me, the one with a functioning TARDIS and sufficient knowledge of what happened - to examine you."  
  
Now he's the one pacing.  
  
"This is why you can communicate so directly with my ship," he says. It's not a question. "Why she opens doors for you and guides you places."  
  
She nods. "We made a deal, her and I. To save you."  
  
"Him-me or Me-me?"  
  
Rose can't help a flicker of a smile. "You-you, of course," she replies enigmatically. But then her face goes stern. "I'm not telling you anything else about it, Doctor. I know you're resolved to forget, but forgetting isn't like that... you told me that some things leave traces, and we can't risk it with this. It's too dangerous. I won't have you in danger because I couldn't keep my mouth shut."  
  
He's still pacing, but when he looks over his shoulder, he can still see the gold twist and curl around her eyes. But more than that, he can see her fear. Fear that he'll leave. Fear that she'll die. Fear that she'll _never_ die, most likely. In this moment, he feels every bit his age.  
  
Rose has always been the sort of problem he could never solve - a complex creature housed inside a rather simplistic little body - but now her biology is every bit as unfathomable as she is. He stops in his tracks, just staring at her. _What have I done to her?_ The thought rings through his mind like a grating strain of music, sending ripples of discomfort through his brain and body. _My precious girl._  
  
She steps forward, the sound of her boots on the tile interrupting his thoughts. "I just... I want you safe," she says, and for some reason, the words feel big and heavy and laden with meaning that he can't quite grasp, but his time sense suddenly flares - a warning signal sent, but he's unsure of what it warns against.  
  
Finally, he sighs. "You're always protecting me, Rose. And somehow, I never can protect you."  
  
"That's not true, Doctor," she says, and her voice cracks. Her small hand slides down his arm and laces her fingers through his. "In the end, you always, always protect me."  
  
He can't help but scoff. "Clearly not, if you ended up here."  
  
"But it's like I said, though. In the end, you're came back for me. I'm not 'ending up here' because it isn't the end. It isn't the end until I get my Doctor back." She manages to drum up a smile, but he can see that her eyes are still shining. "Please, can we just...  let me work this out with my mum, and then we can go home - to the TARDIS, I mean. I'm tired of fighting and shouting when we should just be... I dunno," she shrugs and then she's smiling for real, "happy to see each other after so long."  
  
He grins. "Only been a day since I last saw you, Rose Tyler, and I left you _blonde_." He's joking, but he can see the worry flare up in her eyes. He cringes. "No, don't look at me like that, don't make me say you look beautiful no matter what you do with your hair, it'll sound totally soft." He sighs. "Even if it's true."  
  
Her eyes light, and he catches a hint of a smile on her lips. "I see you've gotten better with the compliments."  
  
"You bring out the best in me, Rose Tyler," he teases. And when she gives a soft laugh, it sends relief flooding through him. He's not sure which one of them it came from, but he squeezes her fingers, letting her single pulse thrum into him. He was always better with touching than with talking.  
  
"So, I still look good - for a human, that is?"  
  
"Oh, hush. You knew what I meant," he says seriously.  
  
"No, actually... at the time, I really didn't. I taunted myself with it for ages." Her voice drops low, mimicking him. "You said 'considering you're human' and I felt about one inch tall. But I've come 'round to accepting that you're just a grumpy old man who hates giving compliments."  
  
"Yup," he replies cheerfully, popping the 'p'. "Just a curmudgeon, me."  
  
"D'you think I should go get my mum?" Rose asks thoughtfully. "I'm sure she thinks I'll need twice as long to get all my bollocking out."  
  
"You'd be within your rights," the Doctor says gruffly, guiding her back toward the kitchen table, where they both sit, keeping their hands clasped over the table.  
  
"Sorry, Doctor, but you're not the man to tell. I'm afraid I've got nothing to shout at you about." His eyebrows arch and she laughs. "Well, other than what I've already shouted about. But that's not even your fault, really. You've gotten pulled out of your timeline to go rescue a shop girl who always wanders off."

They sit for a moment in silence, letting that calm that had been sucked out of the room slowly continue to return. When Rose stands up, her eyes are glistening, but she wipes away the suggestion of tears. "Enough of this," she says. "I'm gonna go talk to my mum, see if I can smooth this over. We deserve a real goodbye, she and I. And I'm sure she'll want a chance to convince me to stay." Her face is wistful. "Be back in a bit?"  
  
"Fantastic," he says pleasantly.  
  
But when she returns from her mother's bedroom, he's gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure he's gonna have a great explanation for this.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose finds her missing Time Lord.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An early update for a lazy Sunday afternoon! Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend.
> 
> As usual, all mistakes are my own. But Rose Tyler? She and her Time Lord only belong to one another and the BBC.
> 
> Brief warning: Some description of a panic attack in this chapter.

**2011\. Day Two.**  
  
The kitchen is empty. His cup of tea is empty, a ring of tea leaves staining the bottom of the mug. Her mum stands there with arms crossed as Rose dashes from room to room, each impeccably-designed and yet suddenly featureless to her roving eyes.  
  
 _I didn't even hear the door,_ she thinks, a whitewash of panic suddenly bleeding into her mind and wiping away coherent thought. _No,_ she tries to assert some control over the hazy terror. _Not right now. No._  
  
Jackie finds her standing in the middle of the living room, hands once again pressed to her chest as she attempts to center herself.  
  
"I'm gonna kill him," the woman mutters, gently wrapping her arms around Rose. She tries to guide her daughter toward the couch, but her body is too paralyzed by fear. "Rose, love? Concentrate on your breathing, yeah? Can you do that for me?"  
  
"I have to find him."  
  
"I know, love, you will - in a minute. Just try to take a deep breath for Mum, alright? That's right. Remember what Dr. Jones showed you."  
  
As Rose gradually gets control of her galloping heartbeat, the panic doesn't dissipate so much as focus. She will find the Doctor, because he isn't gone. It won't be like before.  
  
"I'm sorry, Mum," she says weakly. "I have to find him. I promise I'll come back to say goodbye." She grips her mother's hand tightly and she wills Jackie Tyler to believe her, but she can already see the resigned look. "I promise," she repeats.  
  
"I know, sweetheart," the woman replies. "Go find your Doctor."  
  
And then she's running again.  
  
  
  
She'd said her piece, and then Jackie held up a patient hand.  
  
 _"I know I can't say anything to change your mind, Rose. After all, I've been waiting for this ever since he said goodbye on that beach. Something told me it wasn't over yet - not for you two."_  
  
Her feet pound against the concrete as she rounds a corner.  
  
 _"Granted, I didn't expect it to be_ him. _Now, don't fuss, I may not know what you see in him, but I won't argue."_  
  
 _"Mum, I'm sorry. It's just... he's it for me."_  
  
 _"I know, Rose. Just... be careful this time. And tell him... you have to tell him about the--"_  
  
 _"I will, Mum. This him, he's figured it out. It's part of the reason why he agreed that I had to go back. It could be dangerous if I stay here."_  
  
 _"I wish there was a way for you to tell me... for me to know you're okay. When you get back and he finds out what's..." Rose knows she wants to say "what's wrong with you," but is grateful that Jackie instead falls silent._  
  
 _"If there's a way, the Doctor will find it, Mum. I promise. And there may not be anything wrong with me at all! Maybe I'm just a bit more... alien than before."_  
  
 _"I know, love. It's just..._ that's _what I'm afraid of."_  
  
It takes her nearly half an hour to run all the way back to the TARDIS, and she feels every second ticking in the back of her mind. Her mother's fear and sorrow haunts her steps. But she's got to find him. Her heartbeat strains as her anxiety builds again.  
  
Not fast enough.  
  
She pushes harder.  
  
At night, the streets aren't a great place to be - not in this London - so there are areas she avoids, changes she has to make to her route before she arrives back where the ship sits, waiting, quiet. There's still no light shining out of her, and it makes Rose's throat want to close right up at the thought of the TARDIS, dead, all for her - all because of her.  
  
But then the door drifts open. A clear welcome, if sluggish.  
  
"Hello, girl," she whispers, pressing her warm palm to the ship door as she passes. And then a sigh of relief escapes her when she sees him, underneath the console, tinkering, with something faint and green shining beside him. The power cell, she notes absently.  
  
The sigh of relief turns into a sob, and suddenly she can't even feel herself there, standing on the grating. Her arms wrap around her torso like vines choking a pole. It's like she's descended into dumb panic again, and it's roiling through her entire system. There's no room for anything other than the fear and the relief and _he didn't leave._  
  
He abruptly looks up at her entry. "Rose? What's wrong?"  
  
She sobs again. Involuntarily, her throat is constricting, her body shaking. Shuddering. Convulsing. Her knees have given out, and she's on the floor now. "Doctor," she sobs brokenly. "I th-thought you'd gone."  
  
"Rose?" He wraps his arms around her. She didn't see him approach, can't see anything through the glaze of tears. She must not have spoken as clearly as she'd thought, because he's saying, "Rose. Rose, look at me."  
  
"You left," she mumbles. "You left, you left again, you always leave, you're leaving, you'll leave." Tenses tumble out of her mouth, struggling to make themselves clear. He pulls her face up, looks into them, shines the sonic into them. She knows the brown of her eyes must be practically engulfed in gold. Her mum says it happens any time she gets like this.  
  
"Adrenaline exhaustion," he says. "It must be. You're crashing. Rose, can you stand? I need to get you into bed."  
  
She's unresponsive, knowing that she can't move or her whole mind will implode. It feels like something inside her is vibrating, moving at a speed her body can't keep up with. So she just continues to shudder - unknowing and unhearing, her mouth repeating, "you left" - until she feels him scoop her up in his arms.  
  
The contact against his leather jacket, cool beneath her cheek, is a balm. "Doctor," she whimpers as he carries her out of the console rooms.  
  
"I'm here, Rose." She's always loved the way he says her name, and it washes over her now, the way he keeps saying it - keeps reminding her of who and when she is. What she is. She is Rose. She isn't the howling. She isn't the blank, white wall that reminds her she's failed. She is--  
  
"I'm here, Rose, what is it?"  
  
"Don't leave. Don't let the bad wolf take me."  
  
His arms tighten around her. "Never, Rose."  
  
  
  
 **2011\. Day Three.**  
  
When she wakes up, he's there, sitting on the edge of her bed, looking imposing and odd on her old pink bedspread. Even in the dim emergency lighting, she can see his eyes glittering intently. He's watching her.  
  
She rolls over with a groan, looks at the clock. It says it's past two in the morning.  
  
"Is that right?"  
  
The Doctor snorts. "She's a time ship, Rose."  
  
She lets out a hoarse little laugh. Then, "What happened?"  
  
"I think I worried you. It sent you into an adrenaline spike - a mess of cortisol, too, probably, which set the vortex swirling, trying to make time happen faster for you, for you to burn out the stress. When you got back to the TARDIS, you just collapsed." He stares at her, his blue eyes steely. "Rose, I'm an unspeakable idiot."  
  
She laughs again. Now that her body isn't awash with panic and she's had a rest, the laughter comes surprisingly easily. "Ancient alien moron, you are," she agrees. "You abandon a girl, with her Mum, who she's just spent a bleeding age convincing that you're a good one after all." She shakes her head. "No sense at all."  
  
The Doctor looks pained. "You were in there an hour before I left. I wasn't sure how long you'd be, and I had this idea to speed up the charge." His hands scrub over his face as he sighs, "I didn't think you'd miss me..." A weak smile passes over his lips as he says, "I'm sure Jackie needed a fair bit of convincing. I thought I'd be back before you were done. Isn't an excuse, just an explanation. Rassilon, Rose, I'm sorry." He looks genuinely frustrated with himself, but at a loss of how to express it other than with his restless hands and those sky blue eyes which avoid her face.  
  
"S'alright," Rose says gently, sitting up and taking his hand, prying it away from his face, making him look at her. "You didn't know about the... panic attacks."  
  
"Do you get them often?" he asks, anxiety and guilt all over his face.  
  
"Only since I got stuck in this universe."  
  
"Well, if it's Artron energy like I think it is, it's no wonder. There's no time travel here, no Time Lords. There's no... nothing for it to connect to, nothing for it to make sense of." He sighs again. "All the more reason for me to get you back quickly."  
  
As much as she hates that he'll be gone soon - _back to the dead, where he belongs,_ she thinks with a wince - he's right. This universe has been wearing her down for years, and her symptoms of... whatever it is... have only gotten worse since he landed here. This stolen time can't stay.  
  
Rose nods in quiet agreement. "Just... don't wander off again, yeah?"  
  
His answering smile is weary. "Trust me, I have no interest in a repeat performance of last night."  
  
"And in the future, you and I agree to always wait five hours." Rose can't help the mild disgust that curdles her features as she continues, "Though I'm not sure if that's a general rule, or a snog specific one."  
  
The Doctor's face seems to crumple. "Five hours of snogging? That seems like a nightmare."  
  
Rose shrugs, but the genuine distress on his face makes her chuckle. "Take that up with future you, Doctor. Anyway, those are the rules. Number one: Don't wander off. Number two: Always wait five hours." She tilts her head thoughtfully. "You ought to make those official policy - sign a contract or something."  
  
"I'll take that into consideration when I pick my next companion," he laughs, the weariness draining away in light of her teasing.  
  
"So will I," she shoots back, relieved.  
  
His smile looks a bit predatory when he says, "You wouldn't dare."  
  
"Try me. I can hijack your ship now. She likes me," she says mischievously, trying to hide the elevation of her heartbeat that she's almost certain he can hear. "I could find someone a little better behaved to travel with. Certainly one less grumpy."  
  
"Could do." He leans in and whispers, "Wouldn't be nearly so much fun without me, though." The feeling of his breath sends goosebumps out over her neck again, and she wiggles a bit to diffuse the tension in her body. Her thighs rub together absently.  
  
"I s'pose not," she says, filling her voice with false bravado. "Guess I'll have to keep you."  
  
"Best do," he says darkly.  
  
She can feel the tension in the room moving towards a dangerous level - into a territory she doesn't know how to navigate, especially with this Doctor. He's always circumvented it before, and she wonders why he isn't now.  
  
"So, you've been sitting here for hours?" Rose asks. He nods. "D'you wanna go check on the TARDIS? I'm sure you've been dying to."  
  
He shrugs casually, or in a way that's trying to be casual but doesn't quite succeed. "I dunno, watching you sleep is fascinating. You talk!"  
  
"I do not," she grumbles, pushing him off her bed so she can get up.  
  
"Oh, you do! You say things like, 'Doctor, you're so brilliant' and 'take me dancing again, Doctor, you're incredibly good at it, much better than Jack'!" And he's so close to bursting into laughter that her soft punch to his stomach makes him wheeze in delight. She can't help giggling along with him. "Violence! Could you possibly be more of an ape?"  
  
She herds him back out to the console room, saying, "Speaking of Jack, how is that sexy devil? I've missed him."  
  
The Doctor groans. "Don't tell me we _keep_ him!"  
  
Rose giggles. "Just for a bit. Not nearly long enough, in my opinion." Her brow wrinkles in thought. "In fact, when we get back, I'm gonna make you take me to see him." The Doctor winces, and she can't help but laugh.   
  
  
  
When he shimmies down under the console, she sits at his side, near his toolbox, with her feet dangling through the open grating. She's soothed by the familiar rhythm of hours passing, until the gentle brush of dawn begins to creep in through the small windows of the TARDIS door. Rose enjoys the way they're letting the conversation meander aimlessly about harmless things from their mutual past, interspersed with demands for tools.   
  
At one point, the Doctor says, "Spanner, and not the--"  
  
"--the one with the extra dongle, I know, Doctor," Rose finishes, already handing it to him.  
  
"Well, that's certainly one thing you've gotten better at."  
  
She grins and sticks out her tongue at him, even though he can't see her. "Well, I've had plenty of time to learn your usual tinkering tools."  
  
He scoffs, his face still hidden so she can only hear it. "I do not _tinker._ "  
  
She rolls her eyes and holds back a laugh, but some of her amusement leaks into her voice as she says, "Of course you don't. You're 'making minute, sensitive adjustments to your frankly magnificent timeship,' you are." She mimics his voice in a way that makes him grunt out a laugh. "Though I do notice that the TARDIS seems remarkably capable of taking care of herself. Almost like... she's... perhaps indulging her passenger who so enjoys tinkering?"   
  
He shuffles out from under the console, giving her a halfhearted glare. "Oi! I'm not a passenger. I'm the pilot."  
  
Rose sticks her tongue out again, this time so he can see. Slowly and with a teasing lilt, she says, "And a rubbish pilot at that!"  
  
"Oh, you're gonna get a smack, Rose Tyler," he says dangerously. She shivers at the way he says her name; it's the way that sometimes echoes in her memories, in her dreams. Northern and firm and confident and just bordering on indecent, as far as she's concerned.  
  
The tension lingers between them for half a second.  
  
And then they're both up on their feet and off.   
  
Running.  
  
Like always.  
  
She squeals as he chases her past the central console - around and around again - which now glows a faint, hopeful green. She hasn't felt this light in years, not since Bad Wolf Bay, and her feet seem to carry her joyfully out of the console room, through the familiar, twisting passages. The TARDIS' capabilities are still limited, but she's far larger than yesterday, expanding out beyond Rose's bedroom.  
  
She makes her way back, though, following the occasionally-blinking lights like breadcrumbs. Neither of them want to overtax the TARDIS' trans-dimensional capabilities. The ship hums with good natured relief when they re-enter the console room and she can close off the passageways.  
  
Quickly, the human and the Time Lord are at an impasse. They're on opposite sides of the console, respectively poking their heads around the glass column of the time rotor, only to duck back in the other direction when their opponent moves. Rose's laughter echoes around the dim ship like a child's, and the Doctor's shouted insults and empty threats are scarcely less childish.  
  
He threatens to feed her to a Slitheen and Rose's ensuing squeal of amusement peals out like a bell. Neither of them notice how the TARDIS pulses faintly in response, tailing Rose's laughter.  
  
Finally, Rose makes a mad dash for the TARDIS doors as if she's going to leave, only he knows her and he knows she isn't going anywhere, but this is the only way she would ever think to concede. Once, when they were floating in space, she ripped open the doors in her mock-escape, nearly tumbling into a nebula. He'd caught her.  
  
She likes to let him feel he's won - likes to let him see the trust she has, to let him catch her when she inevitably tumbles off the edge. She relishes the feeling of showing him he's worthy of that trust, of laughter, of joy. In his next body, he'll accept it more easily, but that doesn't mean she can't try now. With him.  
  
She rattles the door handle for effect.  
  
When she feels his arms slam on either side of her, palms pressed to the wooden door, she lets out another squeal of alarm-turned-amusement. "Let me out, girl!" she coaxes at the wooden box. "Don't let the mean Time Lord catch me!"  
  
A tired wheeze that sounds more than a bit like a laugh forces her to concede her loss, and she turns to face her captor.  
  
In truth, he's never hesitated quite this long. He normally lets her go immediately, fearing any kind of prolonged tension or contact. But for some reason, he's decided to stay there, with his hands braced against the door and her body trapped under the threat of his weight. The sensation of powerlessness shouldn't make her shiver with pleasure, but it does.  
  
She can track the exact moment the look on his face turns from playful to something else entirely. Something dark and lovely that makes her eyes widen and her heart pick up speed.  
  
"Caught you," he whispers.  
  
"Always do," she whispers in reply. She adjusts against the door so the handle isn't pressing into her back, accidentally rubbing herself against the front of his body. But other than a sudden tension around his mouth, she notes that he doesn't react. "What are you gonna do with me, now you have me?"  
  
His blue eyes widen at that - at such a clearly open door. At such an _obvious_ sign. "Rose?" he questions, hesitant.  
  
And she knows what he's asking - because he's never once not given her an out, no matter what he looks like - and she nods.  
  
And then, in a manner of speaking, he makes time stand still.  
  
Being kissed by the Doctor is a rather uncommon experience for her, or for that matter, anyone. Even the kiss she'd bestowed on him the day before had felt nothing like being kissed _by_ him.  
  
His mouth feels comparatively cool against hers, as if he's recently taken a cold shower, but soft. She'd lament over Time Lords having such lovely skin if her mental energy wasn't caught up in processing one simple fact: he doesn't seem to want to stop.  
  
It starts as an emphatic but stationary kiss - like they're both trapped in stasis and unable to move beyond the heavy impact of lips - but then, slowly, one of his hands moves to cup her face, cradling her cheek in his palm. She tilts her head, and the changed angle makes him let out a little sigh, a huff of air that shouldn't be necessary if he's using his respiratory bypass - she briefly wonders if he's forgotten about it. Her lips curve into a smile under his.  
  
His mouth coaxes at hers for a long moment - hovering just on the edge of asking permission to enter. And then his lips are wrapped around her bottom lip, and the gorgeous sensation of being kissed by this man, this alien that she's been wanting for ages, pushes her pleased sigh out into the air, for him to hear.  
  
Spurred by her approval, he pushes deeper. Their mouths open and their tongues slide together in a dance older than either of them or their respective species. Something that thrums more deeply than the Heart of the TARDIS, more dark and endless than the infinite void.  
  
Their breathing quickly becomes labored, and he pulls back to let her pant into his shirt. As she inhales the scent of time and its lord, he says, "And you're telling me that we never do this?" His voice is husky and low and like she's never heard it before. She thrills at hearing something new from this Doctor, who is as much material man as he is memory. She tries to impress it into her mind - the unevenness of his voice, the lack of composure, the toe-curling warmth.  
  
Catching her breath, she looks up at him and shakes her head. "No."  
  
"Not even once?"  
  
She smiles. "No, Doctor. We never..." She searches for the right word, and then laughs. "We never _dance_."  
  
He shakes his head. "More fool me," he says, before leaning in to kiss her again. And this time, she can feel it. He has no intention of ever stopping. _Five hours be damned,_ she thinks. _I'll take forever._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe she let him off easy. Or maybe she just doesn't want to waste their limited time together.
> 
> Up next: I attempt to go where I've never gone before... ;) Wish me luck!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our favorite pair get a little... closer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys! I did it! I wrote sex!!! I'm not at all confident or sure of how it came out, but I wanted to convey as much emotional intimacy as I could, so I hope that you all enjoy it. I normally try not to bounce between perspectives, but I wanted to try it out as a way of showing the connection happening between them.
> 
> It's fairly explicit, so if it isn't your thing - which is totally fair - feel free to skip this chapter and scroll down to the bottom, where I'll summarize the emotional beats as best I can. But be ye warned, the next chapter is gonna be like this, too. Because I'm basically insatiable and want to prolong my Nine x Rose feelings for as long as possible.
> 
> As usual, I own nothing but the grammatical mistakes and a brand new print of Bad Wolf Rose, which my husband picked up for me at a convention. He's the best.

2011\. Day Two.

Before she'd traveled with the Doctor, before she'd known how large space was, she'd asked how he avoided knocking about into things - asteroids, planets, maybe a wayward star. He was a rubbish pilot, after all, and there was certainly plenty of _stuff_ floating around out there, just waiting to be bumped into.  
  
He'd explained that the universe was infinite, and growing. The swaths of emptiness were so vast, it was statistically unlikely that you'd ever even find anything to bump into, unless you really knew where to look. It was infinitely _more_ likely that you'd float endlessly in space, alone, with only the far-off stars for company.  
  
Space, he'd said, was quite a lonely place. Without any pull - without propulsion or gravity - things tended to drift indefinitely, and eons could pass before a solitary rock might come upon a sun to orbit or a black hole to get sucked into.  
  
She's never given much thought to gravity - to its indefinable pull - until now, when their bodies have collided with a force neither of them could have predicted, and the space between them is infinitesimally small. No more than a matter of atoms.  
  
When they part again, he breathes into her mouth. "I must be asleep," he says.  
  
Rose smiles. "I promise you're not dreaming."  
  
"No," he laughs, and it's almost a giddy sound. His forehead drops to hers again. "No, not that. The other me. This should be giving me a migraine, like before." One of his large hands curls around her neck, stroking a thumb just behind her ear - the movement is unconscious, she can tell, because his face is furrowed in thought. "Muscle memory is different from other types of memory, you know - harder to repress. It's why amnesiac trauma survivors can still experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress, even if they can't remember the event. It's hard to fully erase what your body remembers." He takes a deep breath. "There's no way I'll be able to fully forget this."  
  
"But it's not... hurting you?" she asks, trying to tilt his head back and get a look into his eyes. When she does, they're more alive than she's ever seen - the blue seems infinite, and sparkling, and vibrant, and a thousand other words are crowded out by the fact that he looks younger than he ever has.  
  
"No, Rose," he sighs happily. "It's not hurting me."  
  
"Good," she breathes, her mouth drawn to his like gravity.  
  
  
  
He's never done anything like this before - not in this body, anyway. All the sensations are different, and stronger than he remembers. But what had started as a slow - if quite enthusiastic - snog can't help escalating into something else, what with their proximity and skin contact and the way she's radiating pheromones. At least, he'd like to blame the pheromones, but he knows it's just that he's mad for her. Still, the fact that she lets out a little sigh every time he flicks his tongue just so - and the accompanying flush of chemicals - tells him he's doing something right.  
  
As his mouth drops to her pulse point and she lets out a small, strangled noise that he's never heard before, he knows this is all just Rose being Rose and him being helplessly addicted to giving her whatever she wants. So his mouth moves down her neck, closely attentive to the beating of her heart - feeling rewarded each time it speeds and skips - and to the noises she's making and the way her hips unconsciously rock into his, inciting him to grind back like he's some kind of animal. He'd be embarrassed, only each pant of her breath into his neck sends up a heady haze of Rose and time and _finally._  
  
"Can I?" he asks when he can bring himself to remove his lips from the hollow of her throat, and she doesn't answer immediately. His voice sounds pained to his own ears when he adds, "Rose?"  
  
"God, yes, look, please, look," she says breathlessly. He's not even sure how she knows what he's asking for - he must already be projecting, or she must be trying to burrow into him with her mind the same way her hands have burrowed into the space under his jumper, her nails gliding down his back. But then she's pulling his hand - the hand that's not wrapped around her waist, directly responsible for holding her upright - toward her face. She cradles it in her smaller palm, wraps her fingers around his larger ones, and presses them firmly to her temple.  
  
Her skin is blazing under his, and he can feel the heavy thump of her heartbeat beneath his hand. The contact sends a slight tingle through his fingers, and he knows she must feel it, too. But she bonelessly relaxes into it - into the gentle invasion of her mind. His heart swells with her trust in him, as it always does, and he pushes. Just slightly, just enough to let her know he's there. An open door, not yet stepped through.  
  
"Yes, oh--" she mumbles, her head tilting back against the door of the TARDIS. The only thing that keeps her from banging her head off of the wood is his grip on her, and he is tempted to lean down and press more kisses to the open expanse of her neck, but he needs to concentrate on staying in control. Every impulse says _in, take, mine,_ but he waits for her.  
  
"Doctor," she breathes. One of her hands is splayed out over his stomach now - each finger tip a star, a point in a constellation, and her fingernails unconsciously dig into his skin. The tiny bite of pain send a pulse of desire through his whole body.  
  
She wants him in her mind, and he can feel it in the energy that thrums in her hand - an entire body's worth of want, traveling through her fingers. And he's never been one to deny her what she wants.  
  
  
  
Inside, she is golden.  
  
How could Rose be anything but?  
  
Like dust motes falling through a beam of light, her mind is shot through with impossibly delicate, glowing strands of thought that seem to float serenely through her head.  
  
At the front of her mind, she's all sensation. And it's all directed at him, swirling around him, bumping and rubbing up against him in time with her hips, until he groans from all the mental contact that he hasn't had in such a long, long time. And that's when he notices that the gold threads aren't serene at all.  
  
As they tighten, flex, wind around his consciousness, he feels their flickering heat. They're burning.  
  
For him.  
  
"Rose," he mutters. But he doesn't know what he was going to say. He's distracted by the _Rose_ all around.  
  
_Doctor,_ she murmers from somewhere deeper within her mind, _it's okay. You can come in further._ And then there's an echo, almost pleading _yes, come in, come in, in, in, in, please, Doctor_ and he realizes that's something like her subconscious, her body talking. Her voice sounds lower inside her own head - impossibly richer and breathier.  
  
And so he does - the alien extends and flexes and brushes up against the mental walls and cords of the human. He can't tell where her moans are coming from now, whether they're in her head or ripping out past her lips, but she is decidedly noisy as he delves into the space she's made for him. It's almost a cocoon, only it's constructed from _love_ and _heat_ and _want_ and _Doctor._ She's so alive and warm and wonderful that he can't help spreading, trying to fill in every gap, trying to absorb as much of it as he can. He wants to entwine himself with her mind so badly.  
  
Their bodies are nearly as entangled. He has no idea how they managed to create so much skin contact while mostly dressed, but the hand that isn't at her temple - he's holding her up with his knee now - is under her vest top, flush against her ribcage, drawing circles with his thumb, rising higher and higher with each hitch of her breath. His fingers are calloused and a bit rough, each swipe sending a twinge of heat shooting between her legs.  
  
(As he brushes the underside of her breast, she shudders. _Are his movements absent,_ she wonders, _or is he writing something in his own language?_ He doesn't answer, just lets his hand drift higher.)  
  
His cool touch sends gooseflesh out across her exposed stomach, and her thighs tighten around his denim-clad knee. His other hand blissfully cradles her head like it's the most precious thing in the universe. _It is,_ he thinks, before he can catch himself. She groans.  
  
Rose has lost track of her own hands now, because they're everywhere - scraping over his scalp (with her fingers in the cropped hair that she always wanted to stroke, years ago), cupped around the back of his neck (pulling him closer, closer), under his shirt and ghosting over his stomach and back (hard muscle, skin so soft and cool), fussing with the waistband of his trousers (she can't believe it), trying to unbuckle a belt like she's picking a lock (it's really happening), stroking his cheeks (he's her Doctor), his nose (he's safe), his eyelids (he's _safe_ ). She doesn't notice when the tears start falling from her eyes, because he's here, he's now, he's real. He's hers.  
  
"'Course I am," he mumbles into her mouth. The words come out fast, slurred. "Here, now, real, yours."  
  
That just makes the tears fall harder. "Doctor," she whimpers, and he worries the mental contact might be overstimulating her, but then she says aloud, her eyes opening, "No, not that. 'S just that you're really here and I loved you and you'll never know." Her tenses are grasping, loose. She isn't sure if she's conveying what she wants to.  
  
"Rose," he whispers, and suddenly his kisses aren't hot or demanding, just soothing. His hand has gently moved away from her temple and now strokes her hair. "You can tell me when you see me, when I take you back."  
  
"No," and if she wasn't pressed up into a wall, she'd probably stamp her foot in irritation. As it is, her head tips back against the doors and she tries to breathe. And then her eyes are on his, burning golden. "You, you daft man, _you_. You now, how you are. God, this is so complicated," and through her tears, she's giving a sniffly laugh. "I'm gonna see him again. He knows I love him. I've told him. I'll probably tell him again a hundred times, right after I finish slapping him into oblivion for risking this. But _you_ \- this face, this version of you - can't know." She's holding his face in her palms now and the heat off her skin is a furnace, a forest fire. He'd burn happily. Her face is positively luminous as she whispers, "Doctor - my first Doctor - I love you."  
  
His smile is big and, he thinks, probably very stupid and it spreads out over his mouth slowly. It isn't what he expected from her, to be in love with both of him - all of him. He feels a possessive little impulse at the thought of being _her first Doctor_ and his hands tighten on her. The first to love her, and to be loved by her - it's a privilege he would never have expected to receive from this girl, barely more than a teenager, with her compassionate eyes and wild spirit.  
  
_Only Rose,_ he thinks to himself in pleasure. But then he realizes that she's still distressed and he whispers to her, "I know, love. I know you do." He presses a soft kiss to her mouth. "I'll make you a deal, Rose Tyler. I won't forget that. I'll let myself keep it. Just that." He's peppering her face with kisses. He tastes her tear tracks and all their composite chemicals, kisses them away. "I'll go back and have all of my adventures with you, knowing it. And when I see _you_ again - with a different face or no, brown hair or blonde or, God forbid, ginger - I'll still know it. And I won't ever, ever forget it. Good?"  
  
Her lip is quivering and she's sure she can't speak. Instead, she brushes her fingers over his temple. He feels her there, reaching out for the doors to his mind, and it's faint, but her voice whispers, _Yes._  
  
He looks at her in wonder. Then he turns into her hand and kisses her warm palm, his eyes not leaving her face. "You are bloody fantastic, have I ever told you? I mean, there's absolutely no way at all that you can be doing that. But you are."  
  
Her fingers are still pressed to his temple. _I know,_ she thinks smugly, but truly pleased. Her mental voice in his head is louder than before; she's getting better at it already. And then he laughs.  
  
When he kisses her again, the heat has returned and he can feel that it's going to sweep them away, but before it does, he knows he has to say it. He'll never have another chance, and if he does, he might not be man enough to take it.  
  
While her hand is still at his temple, he leans into it and says,  
  
_Rose Tyler, I love you._  
  
In her head, his voice still sounds Northern, only it is weighted and expansive and wide and wild and it thunders through her mind like an oncoming storm, leaving room for nothing but him. And it seems to echo with at least a dozen different voices, one of which sounds distinctly like another man she knows.  
  
When she's recovered from the sensation of all those voices, her mouth curves into a grin against his insistent mouth. Only fair.  
  
_Quite right, too._  
  
  
  
Her hands shake as she slips off his leather jacket - his armor - and then his jumper. As she drops his defenses away, their thoughts intermingle and tangle in an anticipatory dance of pure, undiluted expression. He keeps reaching deeper into her, and she keeps pulling him in. She's speaking to him so earnestly that he wants to fall into her, hold her mind in his, let her light his way forever.  
  
She tells him everything.  
  
About how, the first time they touched, she felt she'd come home. She tells him that she loved him so quickly that it frightened her, almost as much as the desperate impulse to press him to a wall and snog him within an inch of his life. She tells him every filthy thought she can drum up from nearly a year of travel - all the times she wanted to push him down into his seldom-used jump seat, all the times she'd fantasized about a row turning into something else, about shagging him on the kitchen table, and in the pool, and in the library. Especially in the library. He's overwhelmed by her deviant little mind painting two, five, ten vivid scenarios just in that room. A few involve that stunning dress she'd worn in Cardiff. She tells him how she'd felt when they danced. She lingers on that for a long time, knowing it's a fresh memory for him.  
  
_You held me like you wanted me, and God, how I wanted you to want me._  
  
And then she goes on, tells him how hard it was after he'd regenerated. As he's undressing her - stripping off her trousers one-handed, whipping the vest over her head - she's sharing how much she missed his blue eyes, how she had stolen away his leather jacket and kept it in her bedroom and she'd cry into it at night, because all she wanted was him for what felt like so long. She tells him she missed his voice, the sound of his lovely, low Northern voice saying her name. Nobody else ever said it like that.  
  
Her hands press to his chest, pushing him back. If he didn't feel all of the _everything_ radiating from her, he'd be worried.  
  
Silent, she shows him how much she loves every inch of this version of him, using just the firing of her brain and the weight of her golden eyes. She shows him a hundred images of him underneath the console, or bent over, or smiling at her, or dragging her along behind him on an alien planet - and she radiates all of the accompanying lust and love. The way she sees him. The way she's always seen him.  
  
His is a body unaccustomed to wanting, but even more unaccustomed to being wanted. As she slides down the length of him, drops to her knees, miraculously removes his belt from its loops and successfully unzips his denims, he can feel a storm of emotions rising in the absence of direct contact with her mind. It's all conflict. So much love and want. So much self-loathing and guilt and misery.  
  
But she looks up at him like she knows and gently taps her temple. "Please," she says softly. "Let me show you."  
  
Obediently, he reconnects their minds.  
  
First of all, he immediately learns that he's rather well-endowed, because she gently untucks him from his now-too-tight denims and her mind is a flatline for a long moment, and then it's just a sharp _fucking hell_. He grins.  
  
When she takes him into her mouth - as much as she can fit, anyway - his grin disappears and he groans and tries desperately to keep his hips still, but he finds himself unable to stop making shallow strokes, thrusting in time with the chant in Rose's mind that says, _Doctor, Doctor, Doctor..._ And in his mind's eye as well as physically, he's seeing her gorgeous lips wrapped around him, her hands around the rest of his cock and stroking in time with her mouth, the flush on her cheeks, her hair mussed by his hand in it. He's feeling the gorgeous pull, the heat, the texture of her tongue, and when she moans, he realizes she's feeling it, too. A feedback loop of pleasure.  
  
He helplessly tries to redirect as much of his pleasure into her mind as he can, hoping he can show her, share with her, all the want - the love - all the desperate, aching pleasure that's making him groan and thrust into her hot mouth. When he looks down again, he can see her bare thighs rubbing together to alleviate the ache and he can't leave her like that, so he pulls away. The chill air hits him and he immediately regrets the deprivation, but he doesn't have time to waste on the thought.  
  
With his hand still on her face, fingers buried in her hair, she shivers in sympathy with his sudden chill. And then, like magic, he has pulled her upright and his hands are all over her - cool, but leaving a trail of fire. His mouth presses to her breast, teasing the nipple into a tight point; his fingers deftly slide her only covering - a scrap of black lace - over her bum and down her legs and to the floor. She doesn't even have time to step out of them before he's lifting her, propping her against the door, and her legs instinctively wrap around his waist. The lace knickers dangle off of her right foot, and she kicks them off, flinging them somewhere across the console room. Her heels dig into his backside - still clad in denim, but she doesn't want to stop him, and besides, the friction feels gorgeous against her thighs.  
  
The Doctor's mind is full to bursting now from all of the _Rose._ She tastes like she's powerful in a way he doesn't truly understand, not yet, but still so soft and gentle and tingling with that golden light, and so sweet and hot--  
  
Rose interrupts his mental diatribe on the flavor of her by physically arching into him as he licks from one breast to the other and back again. It's graceless, and infuriatingly stimulating. But that was always his way.  
  
_Doctor,_ she whimpers. _Please._  
  
He smiles around her nipple, worrying it lightly with his teeth. _Yes, Rose?_  
  
_Touch me._ It's a command.  
  
She practically sobs as he sinks a hand - she doesn't know how he's doing it, how he's bracing her to the wall and maintaining mental contact at her temples and lifting her up and now _touching her there_ , all at once - down to the apex of her thighs, where she's rocking impatiently against his pelvic bone. His fingers dance over her clit and downwards, to drag between her folds.  
  
She's so wet, and gorgeously soft, like rose petals. He can feel the flush and thrum of her pulse as the blood collects, painting the skin beneath his hand the richest pink. He never, ever wants to remove his fingers - his sensitive, tactile fingers.  
  
The fingers of a touch telepath, sliding over her, curling into her, and dragging her closer to heaven. He'll take her.  
  
Aloud and in her mind, she's saying things like _yes, Doctor_ and _please_ \- he smiles to himself because Rose seems to be doing an awful lot of begging and it's absolutely fantastic, when has she ever begged? - and _don't stop_ , though he does stop. His fingers withdraw - now sticky and Rose-flavored, he discovers - to make room for something else.  
  
He positions himself right below her, his head rubbing against the silky opening that's so wet and hot, he can't even think straight. But he looks at her - one last chance to back out. And she looks back at him like he's barking mad.  
  
"There was no going back _long_ before this, Time Lord," she manages to grind out with something like an impish smile, only it evaporates when he rubs against her again. "Please."  
  
And he wants to torture her a bit, because she likes it, and he likes it, and somewhere in the back of his mind - a part she mercifully isn't touching - he's still aware of the seconds, the ticking down to when he'll have to take her back and it'll be over. So, he gives her his predatory smile and with his very best _I'm-the-goddamn-Lord-of-Time_ voice says, "Please what, Rose?" His voice is so dark and low with want that it comes out even better than he'd hoped.  
  
Rose opens her eyes and she looks directly into him, brushing past all those layers of insecurity and self-loathing. She looks right into the heart of a man who ran away, flew away, alone in his blue box. He's stripped down now - bare chested, his mind and hearts open to her, and she loves him for it. Hundreds of years of loneliness are soothed away with her human hands, dragging over his chest. "Please, I want you inside of me." Her hands raise to his face, cupping his temples, stroking them with her thumbs.  
  
_And me inside you._  
  
And he doesn't wait anymore, he couldn't if he tried, he just thrusts up and comes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary: The Doctor and Rose use their physical intimacy as an opportunity to break down their barriers, particularly their mental ones. The Doctor uses his telepathic abilities to see into Rose's mind, and experience the changes that Bad Wolf wrought in his precious girl. Her mind glows gold, and she is now able to reach out to him, too - something that should be impossible. She shares her memories of their time together, allowing him to know how fully she loves him; but she is concerned that he won't be able to remember something that's so important to her. He promises that he will make sure to erase everything but that, and tells her that he loves her, too.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our lovers pick up right where I left them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise! This chapter is rather short and didn't need too much work done to it, so I thought I'd post early! Please enjoy the rest of the scene!
> 
> Like before, see the bottom for a summary instead, if you're so inclined. And as always, I own the mistakes and an overactive imagination, but nothing more.

2011\. Day Three.  
  
_"Please what, Rose?" His voice is so dark and low with want that it comes out even better than he'd hoped._  
  
_And Rose opens her eyes and she looks directly into him, brushing past all those layers of insecurity and self-loathing and looks right into the heart of a man who ran away, flew away, alone in his blue box. He's stripped down now - bare chested, his mind and heart open to her, and she loves him for it. Hundreds of years of loneliness are soothed away with her human hands, dragging over his chest. "Please, I want you inside of me." Her hands raise to his face, cupping his temples, stroking them with her thumbs._  
  
And me inside you.  
  
_And he doesn't wait anymore, he couldn't if he tried, he just thrusts up and comes home._  
  
It's like nothing she's ever felt. She was no blushing virgin when she first boarded the TARDIS, and though it has been longer than she'd like to admit since she's been with anyone, she can't help but feel like this is _more._ He's cool, though her body is doing it's honest best to warm him, and his skin is subtly softer and more forgiving than most humans' - providing almost no friction inside her. But despite the slight differences, he just feels... perfect. An encompassing sense of rightness gathers in her abdomen, as well as a pressure that she desperately needs to alleviate. Her head falls forward into the curve of his neck, where she plants an open-mouthed kiss, right beneath his ear.  
  
"Rose?" he breathes, and his voice is so hoarse and unlike him that it makes her shiver. Her movement around him draws out a hiss. "Alright, love?"  
  
She can't exactly answer so much as give a vaguely appreciative hum, intent on stopping her hips from undulating while they get their bearings.  
  
"I should've known," she finally mumbles. "You _were_ holding out on me."  
  
She feels rather than hears his huff of laughter blowing against her hair. "You never asked!"  
  
That's enough to pull her head back up for a look at him. Her eyebrow arches in amusement. "You're telling me that I could just... walk up to you and say, 'Hey, fancy a shag?' and you'd say," her voice goes deeper as she tries to mimic his Northern accent, which is rather ruined by the smile that keeps swelling on her lips, "you'd say, 'Why, yes, Rose! I'd love one! I'm _not_ horrified by the prospect and am, in fact, as in love with you as you are with me!' Is that what I'm hearing?"  
  
The Doctor shrugs, trying to hold back his own grin at the sound of her saying she loves him. He's not sure if he'll ever get used to it - if he'll ever hear it without fighting off a daft smile. "Well, I'd probably not say no," he hedges. "Anyway, you're rubbish at accents, aren't you?"  
  
Rose giggles. "Wait til you hear me do Scottish. I think it's quite good. Now, are you quite done with insulting me?"  
  
"I dunno," he shoots back. "Are you done being cheeky?"  
  
"Oh, shut up and fuck me, Time Lo- _ohhh_..." A shift of his hips has her eyes fluttering shut and her fingernails digging into his bare shoulder. "Oh, _yes_."  
  
  
  
He feels it coming, tries to chase it down and stop it in its tracks, as he holds her tightly against his body. Her skin is so smooth, her hair so soft, her body so incredibly warm, and he tries to use all of that - cataloging it, feeling it deep in his body - to distract himself, to pull back. He tries to concentrate on her slippery wet heat, a molten flow of rippling muscles. He focuses in on how she's clenching around him like she's made to fit, and on the soft whimpers and moans that escape her lips when he arches his back and hits _just the right spot_. He thinks about his fingers, deftly dancing between her thighs in tightly spinning circles, and the way her nipples feel scraping against his chest.  
  
But the pull of her mind is insatiable, like a kiss with an open mouth or a black hole. Time slipping through his fingers, only it's not that at all - it's _Rose_. She doesn't even know what she's doing, but he can feel her mind reaching, opening, blossoming beneath his touch, just begging for him to dig in deep and never leave. What was once an open door has become a cavern. She keeps making more room for him, and he keeps following her down the rabbit hole.  
  
It strikes him as odd, how she's doing this despite being human. Her mind, consciously or not, is begging to be bonded. It's not something she should be capable of. If he were thinking straight, which he isn't, he'd probably conclude that she _isn't_ capable of it. It's just a very convincing display. He's always said that humans are like the universal adapter - they can fit nearly anything, or they at least seem like they can.  
  
Still, she's saying these impossible things - sometimes aloud, sometimes straight into the echoing cavern of his mind. Things like _never stop_ and _stay forever_ ; things that are terrible, terrible for him to hear, especially knowing that this body is a ticking clock and he _just shouldn't_ do what he wants to do so badly. And yet, her words spur him on, slamming his cock into her with greater force, sliding over her clit with a speed and dexterity that he's never put to this particular use before, holding their mental link tight - so tight, so hot - like a lifeline.  
  
He tries to hang on to her body's pleasure, tries to let it guide him to some place of clarity.  
  
So, he rocks against her one more time and the way her body splinters around him is gorgeous - absolutely, painfully exquisite. It's a fireworks display of hot, shuddering human ecstasy that nearly pushes him over the edge. But again, there she is, wrapped around his mind, clinging to him, demanding he never leave, and it's too good. Her mind is sailing above the clouds in a haze of pure, bacchanal pleasure, and she's trying to drag him up with her.  
  
Aloud, she shouts her release; the sounds tangle around the word "Doctor", turning it into a muddied, lyrical mess of emotion that's every bit as complex as the life it describes. Her raw voice echos around her favorite place, around her home. Desperately, she thinks, _I'll never leave it again - never leave_ you _again._ Her pleasure seeps into the walls and the floor and she hopes it's enough that he never truly forgets.  
  
And then his mouth is saying something like, "Fuck, Rose, yes," and he's sure he means it, but he's not sure what he wants to say "yes" to.  
  
When she begins to come down again and he's still rocking inside her, she finds herself running her hands all over him, landing once again on his temples - she doesn't realize they're well past that, he doesn't need that contact to be in her mind, the rest of their bodies are doing enough. She whispers, _Doctor, please. Please._ She's too out of breath to say it aloud. _Please._  
  
She doesn't know what she's asking for.  
  
_I do. You can trust me. I'm your Rose, I'll always be your Rose._ Her free hand is running a soothing touch over his hair, fingers rhythmically scratching his scalp. He shivers. He's always wanted her to touch him like that - that familiar intimacy.  
  
"Rose," he warns aloud.  
  
_Rose,_ he begs in his mind.  
  
And she's hushing him softly, her lips pressed to his mouth, his cheek, his eyelids, his earlobes, his neck, _Rassilon, his neck._ Her mouth whispers over his skin with open-mouthed kisses and then she bites the shell of his ear - just a little, just gently - and out loud, she's saying, "Let go, Doctor. I want this. I love you." A mantra. She repeats variations thereof into his ear with her husky voice.  
  
On her third "I love you," he can't hold it in anymore. The word comes out of his lips breathlessly, barely there, right against her ear, and anyway, it doesn't matter if she heard him say it. Because it's branded in her mind now. The telepathic connection between them is too strong for her to have missed it.  
  
Rose gasps. It's a heavy word. A big word. One syllable, it's a compressed expression of an entire soul with hundreds of years and multiple lives and deaths at its back. Her mind strains to contain it - this black hole. This star expanding. It's hot and cold and timeless and contact with it should absolutely not launch her into another explosive orgasm, but it does. It's like the floor drops out from underneath her, the universe fails to hold her anymore - it's just her hands clenching uselessly at his shoulders and his arms tight around her hips that keeps her from flying apart.  
  
But the word is still there, touching every part of her. It's like there's nowhere he isn't, no atom of her existence he can't reach. It's _everything_ , and she's _holding_ it. Holding _him_. She feels the tears flowing down her face, streams of gold and time, and even those are him. There's no relief from this huge weight, the infinity pouring off of it like steam, it's just this gorgeous pressure that keeps her hips rolling and her heart pounding and her body shuddering and her mind straining, aching, cracking...  
  
"Rose," he grates into her ear, and it cuts through her orgasmic haze somehow - the only thing that could ground her. "Say it back - you have to give it back."  
  
And she isn't sure whether he means aloud or telepathically, so she tries for both. As the name rolls off of her tongue and ripples into his mind, she feels him shudder inside her, and his groan is so deep and loud and wide that she thinks he's the earth, opening to swallow her whole. And her body finally stops its convulsing to just _hold on._ He's swallowing her now, as surely as she held his name and being in her hands mere moments before.  
  
She suddenly feels she's gone outside of time, outside of dimension. It's just him, still stroking into her, but with less urgency. Winding them down. They're floating on waves of chemicals and connection and she doesn't know anything but him and them - nothing at all.  
  
Once her mind begins to clear, she realize it's a Time Lord trick; it must be. He slows the moments around them down, until the descent from their mutual high is syrupy-slow and soothing as honey. She would giggle if she had the energy. _Time Lord aftercare,_ she shares weakly, but with an exhausted sort of humor. _S'lovely._  
  
_I'll take my time then,_ he replies, his thought an indication of a smile. His voice is so clear in her head that it could be her own. It's many voices at once, like before, but compressed. Thick. And so warm. And a smile drifts over her lips as she thinks, _and pleasantly Northern._ That makes him laugh.  
  
He continues easing her down, releasing his bruising hold on her body, and slowly disentangling their minds. He tries to be gentle, but her consciousness is a deflated balloon without his expansive presence to fill it. His is heavy. Aching.  
  
She wants to cry from the loss of him, but instead she's sighing with relief as his hands work soft circles over her. He's massaging her body, lowering her to her feet and then, when it's apparent that she can't walk, sweeping her up into his arms. They shouldn't feel as warm as they do, but she's gratified that his body was so affected by hers. He takes her down a hallway, through a door. He settles her into a bed - his bed? And she can't help herself. She sleeps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor and Rose continue where they physically left-off. Swept away by their physical connection to one another, a telepathic bond is forged between the Doctor and Rose when he shares his name with her. It is a brief, one-syllable name that is somehow overwhelming in its density and complexity, and the weight of carrying it overwhelms Rose's mind. She "returns" his name to him, and then falls asleep, exhausted and sated.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nine and Rose's final bit of time together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I truly cannot believe this story is winding down already. Thank you so very much to everyone who has read and commented. Having never published a multi-chapter fic before, this was such a wonderful and enlightening experience, and I've learned so much. BUT! We're not quite to the end yet!
> 
> As in the previous two chapters, there's a bit of sexual content. Much shorter and less detailed, but skip it if you need.
> 
> And as always, I must disclaim: I own a new fern, but not Doctor Who. (Though I can't tell you what I'd give to have creative control over my favorite show. I'd run all the romance straight into the ground, probably.)

**2011\. Day Three.**  
  
_She presses her hand to a white wall, and beyond it, she feels the hum of her home universe. The warm handprint of her Doctor, reaching back across time and space. "I'm coming for you, Rose," she hears, though there's no distinct voice. Only an endless thrum and a warm light that flickers all around her - as faint as a breeze, flashing colors that she doesn't have names for. And beneath it all, gold._  
  
_The golden bridge that allows her mind to connect to his. The energy that has kept her suspended, one foot in the right universe, during years spent apart. She can't touch it, but she feels it - the brightest light._  
  
_Nothing feels as empty as it did before; the white wall is no longer to be feared. The guilt has dissipated in the wake of an enduring, consummate rightness. And beneath her feet, she feels the vibration of the TARDIS. She knows that soon, very soon, she's going home._  


  
  
Rose wakes because she hears him thinking, a running current that she can immediately identify as _Doctor._ It's quiet, a bit muffled - as if she's hearing someone speaking from behind a door. But it's him, and the realization that she can still hear him flushes her with joy.  
  
Perhaps she was reaching for him in her sleep, because when she opens her eyes, he isn't there in the room with her. She somehow knows he's in the console room, and he's thinking about her and how little time they have left and how the TARDIS is charged now and he's out of excuses.  
  
If he notices she's awake and connected to him, he gives no indication.  
  
So she tries to send a message, a thought. It comes shockingly easily, slipping out of her mind and into his the same way she'd slip her palm into his hand. _Will I always hear you like this?_  
  
He doesn't seem surprised by her speaking. So, he _had_ known she was there.  
  
_I was trying to give you a bit of privacy; your dreams are very... vivid. But no, it's just for a little while after the bonding._ His reply is suffused with warmth when it comes to that last word, layered with cultural meaning that she can't even begin to grasp at. She knows it's bigger than either one of them.  
  
_Will it happen every time we have sex?_  
  
He chuckles darkly and it sends a shiver down her spine. _Oh? You want a repeat performance? I bet I'll love that._  
  
_How about right now?_ She teases him, flashing her current view of herself - naked in his bed, her breasts exposed and nipples tight from the cool air touching them, one of her legs kicked out and wrapped around the white sheet, her hand slowly - so slowly - creeping down her body.  
  
His answer isn't so much a word or a thought - more a flood of need that has already become familiar to her, and as addictive as a drug. She's only felt it once, in the darkness before morning dawned, but she never wants it to dissipate.  
  
Before her hand can follow the path to its intended destination, the Doctor is in the room, already shrugging out of his leather jacket.  
  
She wonders why he got dressed at all. But she does love that coat.  
  
_Thanks, love,_ he thinks back to her with a smile. His eyes are dark as he approaches her. _One of my better fashion choices - apparently singularly good for attracting little 21st century London shopgirls._ She can feel every ounce of fondness, all the ardor he'd been hoarding during their travels, refusing to let it escape.  
  
Rose is looking up at him adoringly now, and her hand is forgotten, splayed over her stomach. She just can't help it. He's magnetic, and he loves her, and it's pouring over her like so many raindrops after a long drought.  
  
The Doctor loved her, loves her, will love her, is loving her. All of the tenses tangle and she giggles.  
  
Still wearing his biggest smile, he kneels in front of her on the bed, tugging away the sheet. He hollows out a space between her legs, coaxing them to either side of his broad shoulders.  
  
His palm flattens on her stomach and her body suddenly feels just too hot, overwhelmingly so, with wanting. Like she wasn't sated mere hours ago. (The number of minutes that have passed pops into being in her brain as quickly as if she thought it herself, but she knows she didn't. The thought is Doctor-flavored.)  
  
( _Doctor-flavored,_ he thinks amusedly. _I like that._ )  
  
_I feel feverish,_ she thinks, dizzy with the feeling of his hands on her.  
  
As he looks up over the taut stretch of her stomach, his eyes sparkle with a joy she's never seen - certainly not from her moody, brooding, downright grumpy first Doctor - and he says aloud, "I think you need a Doctor."  
  
The familiar words trigger a memory that she knows she shouldn't have, but as his head drops between her thighs, she can't think anything other than _yes, always._  


 

  
He explains the bonding to her between slow licks, between pumps of his fingers and open-mouthed kisses. His fingers spin circles and he explains that she knows his name - knows all of him - and there's no one else who can know it. And he tells her how special that makes her, what a brilliant human she is, how gorgeous she is, how he can't imagine ever wanting this with anyone else. He explains just a fraction of what it means, but as far as she can tell, it means _forever_. He speaks for ages, his voice low, his tongue dancing over her sex. His accent brushes over her skin like a feather, so soft, so loving. He knows she misses it - will miss it.  
  
He praises her gorgeous body, waxes poetic about the pleasure he's found between her thighs and in her thoughts. He lingers interminably on the subject of her mind - always bright, always asking the right questions, brave and unfailingly compassionate. Strong, but soft, much like the body he hovers over now, nearly worshipful in his attention.  
  
She tugs on his ears to keep him close, and closer. He says he loves her in a thousand ways, hundreds of little strokes, in the curl of his fingers - calloused and hard, she'll miss them, too - bidding her to come. He summons her impending orgasm with a swipe of his tongue and a tug of his fingers and a gentle suggestion in her mind that he loves it, loves his precious girl, wants her to come right _now._  
  
When her hips lift off the bed and her back arches and she cries out his name, she's not calling him the Doctor. She's calling him something larger and more expansive and infinitely more wonderful.  


  
  
He lays in bed with her, his bare chest to her back, his hands drawing lazy circles over her stomach. Rose feels time beginning to speed back up - truthfully, to exist again - as she comes down from their mutual, shared high. She can't keep a count of the number of orgasms she's had in the last hour, or how many were really in her own body. It seems senseless to try to to separate his pleasure from hers, when one depends on the other. But it start to fade into a gentle afterglow as his fingers skim her skin.  
  
She knows now that he's writing something - he must be, because he's concentrating too much for it to be aimless. Before she can ask him what his writing means, he speaks into her ear.  
  
"Tell me about the future, Rose. About me. About him. About us." His Northern burr is so gentle, so familiar and yet so distant. It makes her heart ache.  
  
She rolls to face him, her eyes pained.  
  
"Doctor--" she says, but he presses a cool kiss to her lips to silence her. It's a shameless way of shutting her up, but she hardly minds when his cool tongue prods at the crevice of her mouth.  
  
Eventually, he pulls away. "Tell me, Rose," he says seriously. There's a dangerous gleam in his eye. "Tell me how good we are. Because otherwise, I might never be able to take you back to him."  
  
She is the one to kiss him now, a fleeting and desperate little thing, like you'd give as someone walks to the hangman's noose. Not long enough, never long enough. But she nods, tries to keep her voice steady. "Alright, Doctor. I'll tell you."  
  
She takes a deep breath.  
  
And begins.  
  
She doesn't tell him about the adventures, because those aren't really what he wants to hear. He wants to know that he's loved, wanted, all along that abstract, untouchable timeline of is. So, she tells him the little things that she hadn't shared before.  
  
"You already know what you look like in the future, but I'll tell you what you maybe don't know." Her mouth curves into a hesitant smile. "You wear glasses sometimes, when you're working on a project or looking up close at things. I don't know if you really need them, but you like them, and I think they look dead sexy. Reminds me of..." She tries not to blush, pushes on. "Well, you know how sometimes you'll be down there, under the console, on your back, working and you have me sit and hand you things?"  
  
"Like yesterday?" he asks with a small grin.  
  
She nods and bites her lip, until he runs his thumb along the tortured bit of skin, freeing it. "Just know, Doctor, that you're torturing your poor Rose every time you get all 'sexy mechanic' on me, yeah? And it's the same with the glasses. Except that's more like... I dunno, 'sexy professor' or something."  
  
He laughs gruffly. "I'll keep that in mind."  
  
"Let's see..." She thinks, tapping her finger to her lips. He leans over and pulls the finger into his mouth, sucks gently. A little breath of air whooshes out of her and she wonders how she can still be so powerfully attracted to him, even after the monumental marathon of shagging.  
  
"You're _even touchier_ in the future, if you can imagine. It's all long, lingering hugs and hand-holding and it drives me barmy. _This_ you at least knew how to keep me under control," she gestures vaguely to his body, "but the other you has no off-switch. It's non-stop. Oh my God, Doctor, and I nearly forgot the worst of it!" An overjoyed giggle bursts from her mouth, even as he strokes her finger with his tongue. "You lick everything. You have to taste absolutely everything." And she looks meaningfully at his mouth wrapped around her, making him release it. He looks a bit cross at having to do so. "You've licked me to test for foreign contaminants more than once, and I'm sure you know what it does to me, but you don't care. Or... it seems like you don't care, but maybe you do. You must do."  
  
He watches the happy crinkle of her eyes, the wide spread of your mouth, and he can't help smiling with her. He's still linked enough to her to share in the images that flood her mind, the memories.  
  
She's scattering fistfulls knowledge about himself through his mind and he revels in his future memories. So many little moments, all tinged with the sharp, exquisite longing of time apart. "You put your fingers right in the jam jar, always eating with your fingers even when it's bad table manners" and "You still love bananas; you once told me to always bring a banana to a party. Although, I'm pretty sure you were pissed at the time" and "You always hug me goodnight, even if we're trapped in a prison or something, even if we'll be in the same room all night" and "You still duck around your feelings, Doctor, but once we go back, I'll make you face them" and then she says seriously, "You still need someone to stop you when you get all Oncoming Storm. But I'll never be separated from you again. I'll make sure of it."  
  
His hearts are aching.  
  
He kisses her like he needs it, like she's air or water or sunlight or any of the other elemental needs contained within his ancient body - _and yet_ , he thinks, _so young still, young and destined not to last._ This body is a brief moment in a very long timeline.  
  
He's on borrowed time with her now, and he knows it. It's only a matter of time before his other self wakes up and all this knowledge starts to flood back, and if he's not careful, incapacitate him. Rose would smack him if he let himself unravel his own timeline, he knows, and so... it has to end.  
  
The Doctor opens his eyes and the cloister bell doesn't need to ring for Rose to know that something terrible is happening. Her arms tighten around his neck, where she's trying to recapture the moment that just passed them by, the time when he was just the Doctor and she was just Rose and they were finally, finally how they were supposed to be.  
  
"Rose," he begins.  
  
"No!" Her voice is strangled when she interrupts him. "Not yet."  
  
"We can't do this forever."  
  
She practically growls at him, her look fierce and wolfish and a bit scared. "We have a bloody time machine. We can stay like this as long as we like."  
  
He tries to coax her arms away from him, but she's stubborn, and it makes him laugh despite himself. He sits upright, dragging her with him. She's like a koala, that's how well she clings, and he loves her for it. She's so young still, battle-scarred or not.  
  
"He needs you, love. We have to go back." His voice is so serious, so old and kind and selfless and she thinks she might hate him.  
  
"I'll have him forever," she insists. "I only have you right now, and that's it. That's all there is!"  
  
"Hey," he says softly, noticing the well of tears that she can't hold back. "Hey, hey. No, Rose. I'm still him. He's still me. Inside of him there's a grumpy old man - certainly _looks_ old enough to be your father, no idea what you see in him - with a Northern accent who loves you. He loves you." He repeats, breathing it into her hair. He hopes what he's saying is true. "He loves you, Rose Tyler."

  
And her shoulders wilt. Her arms loosen. He almost wishes she would fight him again, force him to stay with her. He'd rip apart time for it. He's so close, if only he could be certain she wouldn't turn to dust in his very arms. But he's not certain.  
  
"Okay, Doctor," she says softly, pressing a lingering kiss to his mouth that he wants to get lost in, but can't. Never can again. "Take me home." She manages an impish grin. "And let me say goodbye to my mother first, or she'll find and murder all three of us."  
  
And helplessly, even if he doesn't want to, he laughs.  


  
  
**2006/Nowhen.**  
  
He comes into consciousness slowly, listening to the gentle hum of the TARDIS that's gone a bit bouncy and amused.  
  
Once he's opened his eyes and begun to make an attempt at uprightness, he glares at his ship. "You! You knocked me unconscious!" He points an accusing finger at the time rotor. "What in the name of...? What did you do that for?! Now I have no idea how much time's passed! What if I missed them?" His time sense is indeed a bit confused, but the TARDIS quickly and telepathically indicates to him that it has been exactly thirty minutes since he left the previous Doctor's ship. She also broadcasts a bit of the impatient panic he'd been feeling before falling unconscious, as if justifying herself to the unhappy Time Lord before her.  
  
She also flares in irritation at the new memory of two of the same Time Lord inside of her at once, but that's all she'll say on the matter. It won't be happening again.  
  
That she knows of.

Well, she certainly _hopes_ it won't happen again, which is the best she can really do, what with her mad pilot.  
  
"Well," the Doctor huffs, leaping to his feet and fiddling with the levers. "Right on time, then. Thanks, I suppose. Rassilon, I've got a headache."  
  
And then he pilots his faithful companion into the vortex, and then out again.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The parting of some ways, the joining of others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Doctor Who. Nor do I own the song "Shrike," which I listened constantly to while editing this chapter; that pleasure belongs to Hozier, patron saint of Tenrose shippers.
> 
> Enjoy the chapter, and I'll see you at the end!

**3,090.**  
  
He's picked a safe time for them to meet, on a safe planet. The safest he can imagine. He didn't want to risk Earth anywhere near the 21st century - that place and period was already overburdened with Doctors. So he selected a very calm time period on a peaceable planet full of sentient trees, not unlike Jabe, though not much like her either. These trees were actually disarmingly Tolkienesque, a bit more ent-ish in nature than Jabe had been. _Good old Jabe,_ he muses sadly. (The thought is a bit depressing for what should absolutely _not_ be a depressing moment, but that's always been the way of things - or rather, of him.)  
  
He wonders again when he'll have time to pop by Oxford in the late forties or perhaps early fifties, possibly try to debate Tolkien about religion, if he has the inclination, or perhaps just get a peek at his collection of manuscripts. (He'd already made a go at Lewis. The Doctor hadn't convinced him of anything, nor had he seen any secret manuscripts. But they'd had a few good laughs over a pint and pipe. The man, the Doctor had to acknowledge, could really hold his beer.)  
  
When the TARDIS lands, it's rather less graceful than he was expecting, and he wasn't expecting much. But he can tell she's irked to be parked on the same planet as a younger version of herself - and so near. According to his readouts, the other Tardis is just a few yards away, parked on the other side of a meadow.  
  
The Doctor is irritated. He wanted to be the one to arrive first.  
  
But when he opens the door of his TARDIS, he can already see them there, together. Her hair is brown now, and gone is her old getup of bright pinks and baggy jeans and t-shirts. But it's definitely Rose.  
  
They evidently haven't been waiting long, because the door to the other timeship is still propped open. And they're standing in the doorway, just holding hands and looking at one another like nothing else exists, like they can't hear anything or see or smell or know anything other than one another. He knows it's Rose, because only she could capture the whole of his concentration the way she has; the other him is leaning into her, pulled by the immaterial force of her being.  
  
He suddenly feels very small.  
  
He suddenly wonders if this was ever a good idea in the first place.  
  
He suddenly wonders if she's ever going to look at him that way, or if she'll spend her whole life missing who he was.  
  
But he doesn't give himself the courtesy of licking his wounds in private. No, he's a big man who likes to make big entrances, and his body has already swung fully out of his TARDIS and leaned against the side of it, hands jammed into coat pockets, characteristic smile on his lips. He follows this script because he knows it's what he needs to do to get through, and to keep himself from running to her, and to prevent himself from ripping her out of his past self's grip.  
  
He's rude, but he's not _that_ rude.  
  
Rose finally breaks eye contact with the man she's holding in her hands, looks across the meadow. Her eyes don't seem to catch on the tall grass, or the tiny (and semi-conscious) flowers that bloom in a field of blue. She's just... looking at him.  
  
Her smile is so small, so soft, so barely-there that he feels a rush of dread straight down to his toes. His hearts are pounding out of sync. He's sure if they could do, his hands would be sweaty.  
  
She turns back to the other him - the younger and also older and much more hardened him. She reaches back up on her tiptoes and he is rather shocked to see her plant one on him. It's a hell of a kiss, the Doctor can't help noting. His other self doesn't seem surprised; in fact, there's a distinct air of smugness and familiarity to the way he wraps one hand around her waist and the other drifts into her hair. He leans into the kiss, angling her head in a way that seems practiced, and also that suggests their tongues might be entangled. But he's cradling her so gently - rarely had those hands had cause to display such tenderness. The pinstriped Doctor is almost pleased for this version of himself.  
  
But not quite.  
  
The Doctor clears his throat.  
  
When they part, they're both smiling in amusement. Perhaps at his impatience. (He doesn't particularly like being laughed at, and he tries not to show it, tries to keep his pose relaxed and his face unreadable.)  
  
Rose leans up and whispers something into the other man's ear. Something that makes his blue eyes glint dangerously, makes him look like he's thinking about stealing her away and keeping her with him forever. And then, loud enough to hear, he says, "Go on, Rose," with that (in his own opinion) ridiculous Northern accent that burrs over her name, "go get your pretty boyfriend." He leans down and whispers something short - maybe just a word - into her ear.  
  
And then she's smiling.  
  
And she's _running_.  
  
She comes to a stop in front of him. He looks her up and down - the black leather, the darker hair, the minimal makeup. He's floored by how stunning she looks. And a bit older. His face grows worried. How long has it been for her?  
  
But then she shocks him, in a completely unexpected move - a move that literally knocks him off his feet. She delivers unto his poor, lovestruck face a serious smack.  
  
"What?" he demands, or he thinks he's demanding, but his voice has gone all squeaky. He manages to correct his balance, but not his comfortable lean against the TARDIS.  
  
"That is from one Jackie Tyler," she says firmly, but he can see her trying not to smile. And then she's hugging him, her hands sliding under his coat and gripping the back of his suit jacket in a rather desperate fashion. "And this is from me." Relieved, his arms begin to wind around her, and his chin descends to the top of her head, resting in her soft hair that smells like homecoming.  
  
Over her head, he sees his other self give a half-smile, and then watches all the life drain out of his face. When he steps back into the TARDIS, he looks like he's just seen death.  
  
But Rose now, Rose here, Rose _alive in his arms_ is enough to distract him from his past self's pain. He pulls away just slightly, far enough to get a good look at her. It's only been minutes since he last saw her face, framed by a grey beach; there's certainly no way he's had time to truly miss her, and yet... longing had taken up lodging between his hearts, before he could even notice its presence. It's only alleviated when he begins to grasp that she is truly _here_ , and _real_.  
  
He looks down at her and she looks up at him and there are tear tracks on her face. He can't tell why they're there, but he wants to swipe at them with his thumbs. Instead, he retains his grip on her waist.  
  
"Rose," he says softly.  
  
She hears that his voice - this voice - is different when he says it, not a bit of Northerliness about it, it's pure South London. But his tone is low and gentle and it feels like he's kissing her name, and he is, he truly is.  
  
"Are you alright?" His arms don't leave her, because today is the perfect day for lingering hugs.  
  
And she smiles up at him - really smiles, more of a beam, really. She glows. Shimmers. She is incandescent. Luminous, _éclatant_ , _radiante_ , _satie_ , _prächtig_. Dozens of words in dozens of languages, all to say that she looks as beautiful and bright as he's ever seen her.  
  
"Of course I'm alright, Doctor." Her voice is shaky, but it shines. "I've just had such an adventure!"  
  
He feels his own smile growing, taking over his face. He wants to laugh and maybe sing or dance or something, but instead he wiggles his eyebrows and says, "Really? Is that what that little show of domestics was all about? Is snogging an adventure?" His voice is light and teasing, and he's almost fooling himself.  
  
But Rose is never fooled. Her face falls a bit. "Are you sure you want to know? He said he'd keep those memories locked away, so you didn't remember them and break the timelines or anything. And you still can. You don't need to remember what happened, if you think it'll be better not to."  
  
His little human looks as if her heart might break, and it's much too early in their reunion for such a look, he decides. There will be plenty of time for her to tear into him, for her to cry, for her to mourn. But not just now.  
  
"No, Rose, I'd like to remember."  
  
The ensuing smile transforms her face once again. She looks so happy - blissful, even - and then there's a touch of mischief, a touch of wickedness about her. "Can I help you, then? I know something, something to remind you."  
  
He cocks a brow. "Right now? You want me to remember it all this very second?"  
  
She nods.  
  
" _Well_ , it'll probably cause one hell of a headache, but I suppose, if you really do want me to know what happened, and you want it right now..."  
  
"I do," she says, her eyes dancing and sparkling with gold. "Ready?" He nods. She pulls herself slightly away from him, loosening their embrace. Admittedly, the Doctor is a bit disappointed at the loss of contact, but tries not to let it show.  
  
He is _not_ disappointed, however, by the way her hand slides up the front of his chest - over his pinstriped suit that he really does hope she still likes - spreads in the space between his hearts, and the other winds around his neck, tangling in the fine, soft hair there. (He stifles something that is absolutely not a groan.)  
  
Her face is very intent, but still overjoyed, and he wonders if she's going to remind him by snogging him. He doesn't think he'd mind. A celebratory snog is always welcome, especially from Rose, who he's had precious little opportunity to snog. (Or perhaps he's foolishly bypassed many opportunities to snog her. Which, he thinks, is rather more likely.)  
  
But no, she is on her tiptoes, leaning up, past his mouth, getting close to his ear - if he were human, there would be goosebumps, but instead her hot breath just makes his trousers grow a bit tight and the rest of him remains stoically unchanged.  
  
Anyway, he is a bit distracted by the proximity of her body. But he is not distracted enough to miss the word that comes sliding out of her lips.  
  
_Oh._

" _Oh,_ " he says.  
  
He feels as if he's been struck by lightning, and he's sure she feels it to. His mouth falls open uselessly, his magnificent gob, for once, completely at a loss. His hearts are hammering beneath her hand, which suddenly feels like his only connection to reality. Her warm, delicate hands on his body are the only thing he knows.  
  
" _Rose_ ," he grinds out, almost pained, but in an absolute agony of pleasure.  
  
She pulls back, a beatific smile on her face, and she sees that brown eyes have gone black, his jaw is completely slack, and he looks as if he wants to eat her. She shivers a bit and tightens her grip on his hair, only slightly trying to tug him out of his trance. In truth, the whole overpowered-by-Time-Lord-bonding look is kind of... sexy.  
  
She murmurs, "It's a lovely name, isn't it? Rather a mouthful, though." And the way she says 'mouthful' is borderline pornographic, and his body is so tense he wonders how he doesn't just crack and fall apart. But instead of cracking, instead of falling apart, he simply swings her into the TARDIS with both hands.  
  
The door automatically shuts behind them, because he's too busy for things like doors and privacy and the material universe. He's got _Rose_.  
  
Her fingers glide up to his temple, her thumb skimming over his cheekbone and eyelid and brow along the way. God, but she'd missed this face, this wonderful, freckled, gorgeous face with that bottom lip that had so often undermined her sanity. With a deep breath, she gathers everything she has been saving inside - every late night she spent in her lonely apartment, looking for a way to get back to him; every memory of every planet they've stepped foot on; every long, lingering hug she's wished would last a lifetime; every moment that she's spent wanting him; every memory with his last body that she's just had the pleasure of creating - and she thinks, _I love you._  
  
He's floating. He's swept away by the depth of her love for him. It's in his mind as a palpable current, flowing over him like waves over sand. It's everywhere. It's huge and timeless and he feels the timelines swell and adjust to the complete infinity of her love. The universe makes room for a Rose Tyler who has bonded herself to him for all time.  
  
He's... he's speechless.  
  
Well, not entirely.  
  
It's not something he's sure he'll ever be able to say aloud. It's something he's struggled to let his brain even _entertain_ , as if doing so would cause some kind of foundational collapse in the universe. But with her here, with his name buzzing about in their minds, with the way time is singing, with the way he can feel the pulsing glow of her consciousness pressing into him just like her soft body, he is no longer quite so frightened.  
  
The Doctor's fingers tremble as they press to her temples.  
  
_Rose Tyler, I love you._  
  
The weighty words settle over her like a blanket of snow. And there it is, she can hear it echoing, that chorus of voices in the distance, the voices all belonging to him. One voice - she wants to think it's maybe a bit stronger than the rest - sounds a bit Northern, and the way the accent hangs on her name is warm, familiar, immeasurably comforting.  
  
She is smiling at him now, that Rose Tyler sunshine smile with the tongue in the teeth and he wants to pull her directly into his mouth, taste her on his lips forever. So, he decides he will.  
  
With their mouths joined and their minds intermingled, he knows it's true and it's always been true, right since "run" and the first time he held her hand. He knows it like a mathematical fact. He loves her, he loves her, he loves her.  
  
Loved her. Will love her.  
  
She's still smiling into the kiss and she can feel the spinning of his mind as if it's her own. She doesn't know she'll ever stop smiling again.  
  
And she thinks, _Quite right, too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that's the last real chapter! (The next one is more of an epilogue.) Oh my goodness, I cannot believe we've arrived at this point. Thank you, everyone who has read and left kind comments. You are all infinitely wonderful. I know I haven't reinvented the wheel with this story, but it's been such a pleasure to interact with all of you, and share this little daydream that spiraled out of control.
> 
> See you next week for the final installment. And hopefully, not long after that with new projects! (Possibly some Eight x Rose content incoming...)
> 
> <3


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor, in the TARDIS, with Rose Tyler. Just as it should be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final bit of the story, in the form of an epilogue.
> 
> Thank you again to everyone who has read, commented, and enjoyed this story. I appreciate you all.

_**Epilogue**_  
  
**Nowhen.**  
  
They've been kissing for what seems like forever and also like no time at all when he pulls away abruptly. His eyes are very, very dark and very, very serious. "Now, hang on, I wanted to give you two some time, obviously, to do things right and..."  
  
Rose's brow wrinkled in confusion. "What, Doctor?"  
  
"I took you up against a wall?" He demands with something in his tone - and in the texture of his mind - that indicates irritation and amusement and a not insignificant amount of embarrassment all simultaneously. She is used to this level of complexity in his emotional state, but always from an outside perspective. She's never been embroiled in the push-pull of this version's emotions directly before. "Our first time? Against the bloody wall? Really?"  
  
Rose coughs out a laugh. She's not exactly used to such language - not from him.  
  
"Well, what's the point, love, when you're inside my head already?" His fingers tangle in her hair and give a gentle tug. "I think we're a bit past censorship."  
  
"Probably," Rose replies, withdrawing her hands and letting the connection fade. She realizes that it's been years for him since his mind was this intimately connected with anyone - and he can't even properly remember when he was connected with her - and she figures she owes him a bit of privacy, a bit of time to adjust. "I _knew_ you were up to something with that stupid car battery."  
  
He ducks his head, trying not to let the guilt show. "I wanted to give you two the chance to steal some time, yes."  
  
"It was dangerous."  
  
"But worth it," he hastens to reply. "Though the wall really was a terrible way to go. I was hoping I'd go in for something a bit more... romantic."  
  
Rose smiles, already feeling nostalgic over her stolen time with the man she loved. Softly, she says, "But that wouldn't have been like us at all."  
  
"I suppose not."  
  
Her grin brightens. "Alright, now, let's have some more of that foul mouth of yours, Doctor."  
  
He looks at her like she's cracked. "You want me to swear?"  
  
"Yes." She gives a pert nod, a wicked smirk stealing across her face. "I like it. It's sexy."  
  
"Sexy? Really?" And there they are, the bedroom eyes are back. She wants to fall into them, let herself sink into their chocolate depths - and as she's thinking that, she wants to smack herself for even permitting the phrase "chocolate depths" in her vocabulary. She's so idiotically smitten with him - regardless of body, regardless of where and when they are - that she could laugh at herself. But she quickly redirects her focus to his intent stare, which feels very much like a look she could get lost in. "Oh, what the hell," he says with a sigh. "Alright. but I'm not going to shag you against a wall again, if you don't mind. _Well_ , not today. _Well_ , perhaps today, but not right now, and certainly not for the first five times or so. Maybe six. Maybe ten? I've no idea what my refractory period is like in this body, I've never tested it..."  
  
"God, I missed the way you babble on," Rose sighs, letting her head fall into his neck and while she's there, she decides to nip at it a bit, see if she can elevate that dual Time Lord heart rate.  
  
"It's not babbling," he insists, gently easing her away from his neck, but not before his hearts pick up speed, "if it does eventually come to a point, which is: Rose Tyler, can I take you to bed?"  
  
She grins, her tongue sliding out between her teeth. He tries to nip at it, but she evades him, and her grin grows. "So we can test your Time Lord refractory period?"  
  
"That," he says in a conversational tone, and then his voice drops to a growl. "And so I can fuck you so hard you forget your name."  
  
Any breath that was in her lungs is now rapidly evacuated, and a shudder travels down her spine. " _Oh._ "  
  
"Too much?" His tone is light again, his eyes questioning.  
  
"God, never."

"I knew there was a bit of _him_ left over in there, somewhere," he replies, almost absent.

It's only Rose tugging him down for a sloppy kiss that brings him back. "How much?" she breathes into his open mouth.  
  
When he pulls away again, his smile is wicked, and Rose knows that if she faints, he'll never let her live it down. So, she doesn't faint, but she does have to focus very hard on breathing for a moment. The air smells like home and time, and she takes a deep lungful. Only days ago, she'd been certain she'd never feel at home again. And yet, here she is. On the TARDIS. With her Time Lord. Where she belongs.  
  
And then she takes off running, pulling a beaming alien in her wake.  
  
She's never been in this him's bedroom before, and yet, since she was just there - a matter of minutes and years and universes and faces ago - she knows exactly how to get there, her legs moving confidently down hallways until she's bursting through the appropriate doorway. She spins and fixes her mouth to his, fingers immediately flying to the buttons of his oxford.  
  
_God, the jacket and jumper were_ much _easier._  
  
But something causes the Doctor to grip her arms and push her gently - but firmly - away. He pants out, "Rose, wait."  
  
"What is it?" she asks, still working on his buttons.  
  
"Now, forgive me for saying so, but you're projecting _incredibly_ loudly, and I know it's partly the bond and partly the fact that you've always been... _well_ , demonstrative, but the fact of the matter is that... erm, I couldn't help but notice that you were thinking about, you know, the other me. The old me. And it occurs to me-"  
  
Rose huffs impatiently, her hands stopping on a button. "Don't you dare tell me you're jealous."  
  
His hands reach up to cup hers, pulling her fingers deftly away from his shirt and then cradling them to his chest. "No, Rose, it isn't that. It's more that- Rassilon, this is more difficult than I thought it would be. I'm just saying that... well, there's actually something we need to do first. Before the, ah," the tips of his ears turn pink, "before things continue."  
  
"God, you're such a tease!" she groans, stomping her foot in a little impatient movement that reminds him that she's young and her blood runs hotter than his and - judging by her pheromones - she's probably not going to agree to his suggestion, because she's practically glowing with all the want.  
  
And a very large, very pleased part of him wants to give right in. Wants to let those clever fingers go back to what they were doing, and put his own hands to infinitely better use.  
  
But it's the glowing and projecting that reminded him.  
  
Reminded him of a memory he's just unlocked, unpacked, and yes, remembered.  
  
_It's the eyes. Your eyes glow. There's gold in them. I should have known, he should have known..._  
  
_If the vortex is still inside you, you may well die tomorrow. Or live forever..._  
  
"Rose, I know you're going to take this as a continued demonstration of my, as you call them, 'mixed signals' and 'complete lack of communication skills', but you need to follow me to the medbay, right now." He drops her hands, and reaches up to tug anxiously on his ear. "I need to run some tests."  
  
"Tests?" She sounds skeptical, and no wonder.  
  
"On you. On the artron energy inside of you. On your blood and biology." He finds his hand drifting up to smooth over her hair, in a motion he's unspeakably pleased that he's allowed to perform now. She's his _bondmate,_ he thinks wonderingly. His touch is welcome; he can feel it now with a certainty he'd never had before. "Before anything else, I need to be certain you're safe. I've... been careless with you." He swallows. "I won't allow myself... to lose you again."  
  
"Doctor-" Her voice is so soft, but he doesn't let her finish. He doesn't deserve to be soothed, not after all the oversights. Not after all the denial.  
  
"I'm serious, Rose. I'd like to make sure you're safe, if you'll let me."  
  
Her eyes narrow, but he can see the playfulness lurking beneath. "And _then_ we can-"  
  
"Yes," he interrupts again, swallowing thickly. He doesn't need to hear her thoughts to know what she's talking about. "Very much yes."  
  
And because she's madly in love with him and she'd follow him anywhere, she lets him take her hand and drag her away from his bedroom, and into their future.  
  
-  
  
200,100.  
  
On the Game Station, there's a man who is dying. He can feel it, even as he carries the unconscious body of the woman he loves back to safety. Every atom of his body is begging to split apart and reform. He's practically vibrating with potential energy. And it shakes something loose - something he doesn't even know he's hidden.  
  
A memory. Or a dream. A vision of a future or a past. He can't tell.  
  
But he sees Rose, and her irises are trimmed in gold, tear tracks tracing her cheeks. A parallel to now. A precursor and also, a future. Her face is thinner and her hair is darker. From her future, he decides.  
  
Her lips are cherry-red, kiss-bruised. He isn't sure how he knows, but he knows. Like he knows his own hands, he's certain that he made her look like that - flushed and rumpled and warm and alive.  
  
Her voice whispers, "My first Doctor, I love you." The words travel straight to his hearts and burn there. Burned there. Will burn there. Have always been burning there.  
  
And then she's gone.  
  
He comes back to himself on the TARDIS, still holding an unconscious Rose, most definitely still blonde. He sets her gently on the ground, doing the best he can with his unsteady arms. He can't tell if it's the regeneration energy or this new memory that's got him shaking. As he kneels beside her, he looks into her unconscious face with love in his eyes, and he's beaming, because he knows.  
  
He knows how it feels to be loved by her. He's always known.  
  
And there's that glow he'd seen, moments ago on the Game Station and then again in his memory. There's something in her that calls to him and twines with his hearts, as much as time itself, or perhaps even more. Past, present, and future.  
  
She has loved, she loves, she always will love him.  
  
Forever. He can see it in more than just the timelines, which are stretched to infinity. He can see forever in her face.  
  
Blue eyes are glittering with more than just tears as he whispers, reverently, "Oh, my precious girl. We'll be fantastic."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *hugs*


End file.
